“Put Us Back Together Right”
from the album Kill Them With Kindness
2006
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Pop music (and music in general, for that matter) could not exist unless we possessed the ability to be heartbroken just as easily as we fall in love. It’s that contrast — the fact that we have that emotional frame of reference — that separates us from machines and ex-girlfriends and necessitates music in the first place. And it’s that first thing, the despair of heartbreak, which usually is not made the topic of upbeat pop-songs for a very good reason: we listen to pop music because we want to feel good. By definition, pop music is something that comforts us with its familiar repetition and its reassuring or otherwise care-free lyrics. So is it possible for something to exist as upbeat pop music and at the same time, unabashed melancholy?
On Kill Them With Kindness, their August 22 debut LP for Polyvinyl Records, Headlights answer that question with a resounding “yes.” Their synthesizer wall-of-sound and approach to the sadder sides of electropop and indie rock is one that’s also finely polished and self-assured. This is a band that feels comfortable in their own skin, and its perhaps this quality, above all else, that allows us to feel comfortable in ours; it’s this quality that gets us singing along to to lines like “sun shines on summertime, but your friend, he’s no friend of mine.” And it’s this quality that makes Kindness one of the year’s most intriguing and memorable debuts.