There is something emphatic and romantic about Electro Spectre, something primal and elemental even as their sound dances on the spine of its electronic core. Much of their music flashes like hot coals and curls up and around me like smoke, a sharp kinesis of desire laced with earnestness and honesty.
“The River” attempts to depend on imagery to deliver a sense of chaos and current, but deeper lyrical analysis does it few favors; it is actually within its divine callback to 1980s New Romanticism, a sound like tight embraces that stirs the debris and, ultimately, washes clean. A blanket of warm, woven synth tones bathes the entire song, intent on summoning comfort, yet these are shot through with a liquid icy chill at its heart; it is the mournful vocals and the calculated elegy of a somber melody that carries “The River” forward. If lyrically heavy-handed, this is a song which flows the most smoothly if approached with intuition; the direction it wends may bend and loop, but the truest metaphor derives in the music itself.
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