Drunk With You, Mistle Thrush's comeback album, ought to make fans ecstatic. Gone from the scene for several years after their last label went toes-up, Mistle Thrush took their sweet time getting back into their groove. The patient have inherited this album.
Dark as the title would suggest, Drunk brings goth flair back the way you've not heard it since Garbage or Curve. Maybe reviews ought to give albums an eyeliner rating; if the lead singer's got as much caked on her lids as Gia Carangi, and looks as healthy, the album gets two thumbs up. Valerie Forgione sounds just as breathy and dark as Shirley Manson and Toni Halliday, although I have to admit that she seems a bit too cheerful for the cutting habit. Take "God's Enemies", in which she earnestly sings "God knows his enemies / keeps them in a bag beside the door," the raspy guitar strings darkening the edges as deeply as a charcoal pencil. The song's opening is a lightly strummed guitar line that sounds faintly Middle Eastern; although the drums and guitar gradually build in a menacing way, they're never loud enough to overpower Forgione's color-saturated whisper. It's so sombre a tune that the band should never play it as a set ending -- no one will ever get laid after the show. "Give a Little Love" muses on the ultimate in unattentive partners, to whom Forgione croons, "You know that I watch you saunter so fastly across the floor / content in your confidence that it's you I adore." The catchy chorus, which mainly repeats the title, surrounded by crashing drums, shimmering hi-hat and twangy, reverb-laden guitar, makes it a certainty for constant replay.
The lyrics don't always make perfect sense, but they usually paint enough of a picture to leave you feeling solemn; sometimes they're even stupid, but the effect is still dark, as with "I feign sleep / all my, all my, all my life" ("Birdmouth"). Overall, the songs rely heavily on the types of sound Forgione can make, and the way Demma and the rest of the band can mimic and accent her sound, and show off (rightly so) their own instrumental pyrotechnics. Rather than lyrical sensibilities, Drunk With You is music of pure yet extremely shaded emotion. Like their avian namesake, the band draws life from toxic substances (the source of their lyrics) and makes beautiful song.
