A new album release from Kind Hearted Thieves delivers a vast and cinematic formula that has a way of telling different stories with each track and delivering them with this certain kind of character that you end up getting attached to almost like you're sitting around a fireplace and listening to someone tell you these stories in person.
The Love and Other Curses: The Maxim of Societal Enigma album is massive and covers this sort of theatrical and folk undertone feel while the songs are lush with additional instrumentation including strings that feel the space and add atmosphere to the songs, piano, acoustic guitar, and so much more that's involved, and it all does indeed create a world for you to sort of Escape into.
This is one of the things I love the most about this record. You can escape into it and while you do you forget about your surroundings completely which to me is an absolute gift because it is quite rare that it actually happens.
This is the kind of record that you listen to from beginning to end all the way through. You must find the time because although some songs stand out as singles for sure, This was meant to be soaked in as a whole. After all, in a way, it's a concept album.
The songs and stories interconnect in different ways and for you to soak the whole thing in and get the full picture listening to the album from start to finish is the only way to go.
Each different song presents a little bit of a different soundscape, but everything is very confluent as you have acoustic guitars and deep-rooted piano notes that are coated with Soulful vocals that have a bountiful tonality and each element of these songs and instruments have a wonderful way of complimenting each other.
Do you have songs that hit hard, and you have songs that slowly grow into a different place. Certain tracks swell and sway and have the feel of being alive and breathing and some of them have this dark and almost gothic edge.
A lot of the lyrics are so descriptive that you can vividly picture things in your head as the stories unfold and I love how there are songs that include violin and bowed instruments along with bendy slide guitars that a reverbed and set into the distance because it all adds to that cinematic atmosphere I spoke of earlier and believe me, it's very engulfing.
You can picture just about any of these tracks in the scene of an intense film and a lot of them blend this deepening storyline and a certain element of reality and emotional drive which I think is brilliant.
That endless element of everything being so fantastical is something that you get addicted to and by the end of it you feel like you just read a book and each song is like a different chapter in the book.
When the album ends you have to stand up and react to bring yourself back to reality again which is massive.
This record came through Anthony can powerful, impactful, and with such a wondrous and almost rustic soundscape.
These tracks certainly do have different levels of intensity and as I said before, the way that they build into this sort of epic emotional feel happens so naturally that you just have to wonder about how they were able to arrange the songs this way.
This was quite a gracefully performed record that had a lot of heart and a brilliant approach to storytelling on record both musically and lyrically by bringing in a lot of that emotion to the stories instrumentally and vocally.
Listen to this whole album if you can because it's worth your time.
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