“You need to un-quit your band”, said DFA frontman James Murphy to Luke Jenner, singer of the then disbanded group, The Rapture. With the breakout success of their scathingly raw album, Echoes, and then the rave pop stylings of Pieces of the People We love, The Rapture had seemed to cement their status as a group on the bleeding edge of pop, dance and punk. To the surprise and dismay of many Jenner seemed to want no part of this, opting instead for seclusion and parting ways with The Rapture. With the surprising death of his mother, the birth of his son, and finding his role in the band grow increasingly distant from what he wanted, Jenner decided to call it quits. As celebrated was their accession, so to was their painful demise mourned. Times, thankfully, have changed; Jenner is back, The Rapture is back. In The Grace of Your Love is the result. And it's damn impressive.
With In The Grace of Your Love, Jenner returns to his former band with drastically altered ambitions and intentions, and the band's tool set is equally repurposed. Indeed it may be more apt to describe The Rapture under it's current incarnation as using an entirely different set of styles and techniques. This was my initial reaction to the album, however in the end In The Grace of Your Love is really still just pop music, an entity not entirely disparate from Pieces of the People We Love. The key differences that divides the two albums by such a wide margin is purpose. With In The Grace of Your Love, Jenner channels a insatiable passion for true and genuine sentiment. This is a far cry from, by comparison, a collection of party pop superfluousness in the previous album; one that was comprised mostly of songs about partying, dancing, copulating. Don't get me wrong, I love Pieces of the People We Love, but In The Grace of Your Love radiates an emotional functionality and depth that reveals the slight shallowness of their earlier work. In retrospect I can understand Jenner's prior frustrations that led him to part ways with the band; If all you can communicate is a desire for hedonism, then stagnation will surely kick in, festering and strangling the creative process. Better to move on before that happens. Thankfully in this case, Jenner returned with a renewed sense of purpose eager to explore his capacity for more emotive offerings.
In the Grace of Your Love is emotive yes, pulsating with pure uninhibited expressions of love, desire, pride, friendship, and wonder. But the albums greatest strength is on how this is delivered. To be as succinct as possible, all the saccharine, melodramatic, embarrassing hyperbole that is not just synonymous but stubbornly entrenched within such subject matter isn't present here. The Rapture miraculously eject such excess and unwanted baggage from the equation. They convey their sentiments with deathly seriousness, commanding intensity, and refreshing hipness. It is never sappy, never overwrought, never lame. Thank god. In “In the Grace of Your Love”, Jenner menaces you with his sentimentality, with a stalking and pervasive horn section. In “Children” he excites you with it, with a beat that almost splays open with elation and joy- it's such a therapeutically wonderful song. In “How Deep is Your Love” he seduces you with it, intimidates you with it- more on that later. One way this is achieved is through pushing his voice much more than on previous albums. In Echos he got by, quite handily mind you, through simple screamo mechanics. In Pieces he surprised many by showing he could actually sing, but was slightly more restrained, treading cautiously through his own untested waters. He gave us examples of what he could sound like when he pushed his voice to the edge like the epic, “Get Myself into It”. On this album he revisits that edge this time armed with confidence and zeal. I can hear this in “Sail Away”, “How Deep is Your Love” and “It Takes Time To Be a Man”. Their are certainly still some pop fluff that doesn't carry the emotional weight of the aforementioned tracks, like “Miss You” and “Roller Coaster”, but the overall tone of the album remains unchanged.
Sonically the band continues the trend of moving further away from their spastic and abrasive punk roots. If Pieces was dance punk, I would liken this album more to pop rock. There is still a bevy of lush synth beats, keyboards and spritely little distortions that make up melodies, like the transcendent and enchanting, if all too brief solo in “Sail Away”. In this album, along with more traditional instruments like saxophone and piano they seem less chaotically or dramatically arranged, showing a lesser penchant for flare and more of an attempt to be alluring. The way broad innocuous synthesizers are blanketed over the end of “Never Gonna Die Again”, in an almost curative way as if to quell the fiery passion of a song that seems unable to find release is a great example of this. Certainly these concepts and directions are not mutually exclusive, but I think I'm sensing a movement towards the later trend- away from pop punk and to pop rock. Much of this softer but still trendy edge can be attributed to the band being produced by Phillipe Zdar this time around. Working with groups like Pheonix and Chromeo in the past, Zdar has a talent for drawing out and combining the more experimental elements of pop with the catchy elements, without pandering to its more sickeningly sweet side. While the songs are certainly poppy what's interesting and indeed exciting about them is that many don't rely too heavily on traditional hooks or chorus in which to base a beat around. “Sail Away” is structured around two basic duelling melodic pillars that bounce back in forth in prominence. “In The Grace of Your Love” is one long slow burn that I am happy to trek through due it it's seductive and slightly perverse sax accompaniment. “It Takes Time to Be a Man” develops increasingly complexly delivered lyrics that almost seem like a chorus, but it's point of fully ascended intensity is saved for simple but effective wails from Jenner. It plays out more like hybrid classical lounge piece and is therefore a little too drawn out for traditional pop hooks. It's a wonderful song full of sweeping and soothing tides of big band style crescendos; It's a stylistic approach that The Rapture has only hinted at way back with “Open Up Your Heart” from Echoes- I'd love to see more of it in the future. Probably the most traditional in terms of pop structures and hooks is “Never Gonna Die Again”. No wonder it's easily the most danceable and quotable.
Not all songs benefit from their devil may care approach to pop structures. “Blue Bird”, while an interesting Flaming Lips esque freakout, is not the kind of song the Rapture is equipped to produce and just seems awkward. Despite the excitement denoted in it's tittle, “Roller Coster” never really get's off the ground, instead just limping forward. Where as Jenner's voice is usually hyper focused and engorged by energy, here he seems bland and anemic here. Oh well. While I enjoy “Come Back To Me” It's paced a little to similarly to “In the Grace of Your Love”, with the exception of it's quirky and mysterious ending; At least one of them needs to be relegated to the status of redundant.
Those quips aside, the bad is far out weighed and by the fantastic. Special attention needs to be paid to “How Deep Is Your Love”. Their magnum opus, the monolithic and overwhelming climax to the album, the best song they've ever recorded. It's fucking good. Two simple piano beats that are meticulously fused together through careful syncopation etch their way into your memory- that's how it starts. Scornful and slurry bass guitar and synth notes speed chaotically forward. Jenner's voice is wounded and titanic all at once. The song devotes equal time to the various lyrical sections adding cow bells (of course) and pristine, sultry saxophones. I love The Rapture's particular brand of sax- it lingers in the background, warping and twisting around the different parts of the song in a improvised yet controlled manner. Ultimately all previously segregated elements gracefully by violently forge together- the piano, Jenner's multi layered lyrics and wails, the sax, cowbells, etc.- into one mammoth and intimidating arc. You have to hear it.
When Jenner first confirmed that The Rapture had re-banded, he made the oddest of comments, promising that the new album would be “100 fucking times better than the ipad” Certainly this is an overly grandiose and hyperbolic means of measurement. But only sightly; In The Grace of Your Love is that good. It's more emotionally satisfying and earnest then their previous works, as the gravity of the album's name implies. It's melodies are silky smooth, warmly inviting, and with just a hint of epic heights. It's easily one of the best albums of the year and a testament to the ever expanding and hopefully continuing greatness of The Rapture.
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