Returning after the tragic death of bass player Sean Stewart last year, HTRK’s brave decision to continue as a band has been worth the anguish. The bastard children of Nico, Rowland S. Howard and Bauhaus unleash perhaps the first taste of a new album with a Suicide cover and it’s brilliant. Coruscating guitar lines eschew the synth lines of the original and wander in and out of bass lines trickling like molasses over an ominous drum beat oozing foreboding.
HTRK – Sweetheart (A. K. A. Love You) by Mistletone
Front woman Jonnine Standish’s vocals coo and purr in a manner both seductive and yearning, the lines ‘I Love You … miss you so much .. you’ve gotta come home to me’ heartbreaking in the context of Stewart’s death, or perhaps just the eternal pangs of parting conjured by a loved one’s absence. Either way, it’s a strikingly assured return; benefiting from rich but never overdone production, and a masterful sense of space that the band had always promised but not delivered until now.
