‘Love Is The Revolution’ by M4TR feels like a heartbeat in the middle of a blackout. It throbs, it hurts, it soars all at once. Solaris, the mastermind behind the project, reinvigorates the familiar comforts of synthpop, disco, and funk with urgency. This album demands attention. It refuses to be background noise. It dances with open eyes through love’s exhilaration and heartbreak. The opening track “Let Love Turn This World Around” has its heart on its sleeve from the get-go. It’s optimistic, even a bit naïve, like the first rays of sunrise splintering through post-apocalyptic clouds. It grooves, but with a groove that moves you inward first. “Hooks” has a summer in the park feel. It is as sticky as a bright, bouncy melody can be, dripping with Ibiza’s late-night glow yet even more reflective than that usually is. Beneath that bounce is a current of longing that anchors it. “The Spektre” moves into darker terrain. The beat is mesmeric, and there is a darkness lurking behind its vocals. It feels like wandering alone in the city on a rain-slick night, equally lost and found.
“No Tomorrow” has more retro flourishes, pilfering liberally from 80s synthpop. It doesn’t feel dated though. If anything, it doubles down on the urgency—If this is all we’ve got, this song screams, we better go all the way. “Just Out Of Time” has a sleek feel to it, a bit sad. In its melody is something distant, like the inability to do anything but watch someone slip away, and the realization that no matter how hard you chase, they’ll always be out of your reach. “Coup de Grâce” is polished. The title suits the song. It slices clean and stylish, confident in its edges. There is something dangerous to the slick confidence. “Siren Song” draws the pace back down again. It has an unsettling, cinematic quality. The trip-hop beat gives it an otherworldly seductiveness. “Kill The Self” strips away the tenderness. It feels surgical in its beauty, and there is something about those cold synths and clipped beats that makes the lyrics land harder. It is a confrontation with ego, with a mirror, set against immaculate production. In many ways, “Life Without Her” is the emotional center of the album. It is a wounded disco song, pulsing and thumping and undeniably real. It’s a sound that can soundtrack those nights you wish you could forget. Solaris damages his rhythm.
“Fight The Good Fight” revives the momentum. The song is an anthem, not in the sense of big vocal choruses but rather in its fight, in the way that love doesn’t always look like soft touches. The sound soars and so does the spirit. “Love Is The Revolution”, the title track, glimmers. This song is not a battle cry. It does not make demands, but in its simple rhythm, it hums with patient hope. This is not a promise of a utopia, but an invitation to create one if we dare. “Polaris” closes the album with a sense of space. It is expansive but soothing, a star you can never seem to reach no matter how long you chase it. It doesn’t offer resolution, but a horizon. What is so thrilling about this album is its deft balance. Solaris lets the music be sticky and inventive, but never vapid. There are no syrupy melodies on this record. It knows its skin. It knows its sound, and it uses those limitations to dig deeper. These songs are about more than surface love, whether they’re laughing or they’re crying. They’re all looking deeper: into grief, and identity, and connection, and resilience. ‘Love Is The Revolution’ is an album for right now. Not because it’s the flavor of the zeitgeist, but because it sounds like truth. Even when the beats are big, the feelings are bigger.
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