Music ebbs and flows, as MISSIO are only too aware. As a duo, Matthew Brue and David Butler have completed six records together, with Love & Heartbreak being the richest in form and purpose. This project, as an entity, is rich with references to mortality, degradation, and inner turmoil. In terms of it being a sonic experience, Love & Heartbreak is strikingly different from previous MISSIO records; a visceral rollercoaster burning with energy on all sides.
“I will make you beg for self-deprecation,” the singer shouts on “Self Deprecation”, sharp keyboards rattling behind the glass-cut vocal. The amorous affection in “You Are My Love” is alluded to in its melodic counterpoints, a Wagnerian backdrop. The term “tender” is appropriate here, although a more sceptical voice might suggest that the sections in which the bass ramps up represent the opposite voice in the affair. Musically, it tells you a great deal about the composers and their fractured mindsets, given the cascading, chiming chords backed against gladiatorial electronic drums. “Superpower” marries pastoral guitars with swirling electronic samples.
In this case, the collaboration is very nearly based on the notion of scientific discovery: a cavalcade of instruments battering against words about expedition. “I Keep Running” curates a portrait of immolation, in an effort to understand the urgency of lust in a fruitful and solid environment. An artist can be too venturesome in his, her or their direction, and Love & Heartbreak is occasionally guilty of over-egging the techno pudding. To their credit, as the riffs become more bombastic and preposterous, the vocal melodies emerge with mightier conviction, “The Moment” constructing a firmer, more jaundiced philosophy on irritation than is commonly heard in the pop lexicon.
Moreover, it becomes increasingly apparent that the narrative MISSIO has spun is as barren as the terrain that populates Suede‘s Dog Man Star: a geography in which sex is a currency best spent as an alternative to murder. Stripping everything down to the abstract construct, “Gotta Let Me Know” proves the theory that survival is a test of fitness and resolve. “With a Cigarette” is a finely tuned and unpredictable composition, running down the gauntlet of dark spells and ritual incantations.
“Where’d You Go?” proves to be an exercise in dynamism, etching into the psyche of the narrative voice’s demons and demonstrations of verbal protest. There’s an unexpectedly groovy element to “Bleed”, a droning, dense beat playing behind the hypnotic lead vocal line. Drenched in electronics, synths and samplers, Love & Heartbreak is a claustrophobic tale, and what’s more impressive is how everything fits together so naturally on this tune.
The theme of aggression pervades the record as an entire entity, ultimately exploring the desire to be admired in direct contradiction to the implosive effects. “With my own issues staring at me,” comes a sharp lyric; “I’d save myself, but I’d prefer you be free.” “Dopamine Kisses” climaxes with an instrumental passage that sounds like it came from a Vangelis outtake, just as “I Remember When” owes more to Michael Mann and Miami Vice as a sound painting.
LIONSTORM and Kent Osborne both cameo on the album, though the majority of the work belongs to MISSIO as a two-piece orchestra. The band’s sixth record is a step in a new, more inventive direction; for novices of the group, this is tabula rasa. A clean slate for the artists is a re-start and re-calibration for the listener, embracing new textures and sounds they haven’t uncovered beforehand. Love & Heartbreak should be regarded as an art installation by its own terms, measurements that do credit to the furnished piece.