brendan2's Full Review: This Is Forever * by She Wants Revenge
This is Forever is more of the same from She Wants Revenge. Their brand of dark dance music is still very much inspired by Joy Division and New Order, vocalist Justin Warfield is still utilizing his fake-British monotone, and they're still all doom and gloom.
Like She Wants Revenge, This is Forever is mostly made up of gloomy songs about failed love set to cold dance music relying heavily on synthesizers, keyboards and drum machines. For the most part, the formula still works. This Is the End isn't too special musically, but the lyrics make one-night stands sound positively poetic, though unfulfilling: "Now you’re pressed against somebody who you don’t even like, though they’re cute and they’ll pass the time, kissing around their neck and not their mouth, so they don’t look in your eyes."
Sometimes, though, the lyrics start to seem over-the-top: Replacement features the couplet, "It started as an honest attraction, began under the guise of a flirt/ Till you were screaming at the edge of the bed, “nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!” I still love the song, though, from the chugging guitar riff to the crashing drums which lead into a glorious synth-pop chorus featuring obtuse lyrics such as, "She cries like a baby, but she only learned to dream in sound."
The first half of the album contains many highlights, including the insistent tapping drum beat and brief bursts of guitar during the "Oh no"s in the chorus of Written in Blood; the spiraling riff and angsty yet heartfelt lyrics of Walking Away; the low-key electronic keyboard work at the beginning of True Romance; and the entirety of What I Want, a catchy synth-pop track with a great guitar riff, which chastises the very "little girls lost" who make up a good portion of the group's fan base.
It is She Will Always Be a Broken Girl which emerges as the album's standout track. Musically, it sounds similar to the first album's "These Things," and also like a Psychedelic Furs song, maybe "Pretty in Pink." Unlike most She Wants Revenge songs, the lyrics don't tell the story of a cold-hearted b!tch who causes doom and destruction; instead, it's the story of a young girl who's nervous about going to a party where the boy she likes will be. The lyrics perfectly capture the thoughts running through the girl's head: "She wonders if he’ll even remember/ She asked him in a casual way, just in case he didn’t want to go with her/ In that event she knew just what she would say."
The second half of the album hasn't impressed me as much as the first half. I like the songs well enough when I listen to them, but the first few songs do the same thing, and better, so I'd rather listen to them. I do still love This is Forever to pieces, but I can't wait to hear a different sound from She Wants Revenge. The hip-hop-flavored, but still distinctly SWR, "Time" they did with Timbaland was a nice change of pace, and I'd love to hear them switch things up a bit on their next album.
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