To many, What’s Between will be viewed simply as the debut solo album by Irish singer-songwriter James Kelly aka WIFE, but What’s Between is a disorientating and splintered pop record that finds light and dark at constant odds with one another, industrial tones and throbbing techno beats clashing with elegiac pastoral atmospherics. The title is a reflection on what exists in the emotional and physical space between two people, emphasized in the album’s dualities between light and dark, aggression and softness. It’s a record in which Kelly can finally express all of the sounds that interest him, melding pop, metal and electronic into something that can only described as his take on pop music. Yet even on seemingly lighter moments the lyrics often betray their sunnier surroundings: “Tongue” relates to how people present themselves as something they’re not, while “Heart Is A Far Light” is about wanting someone to care about you, even if it is a lie. Throughout the record, Kelly explores the motives behind the lies we may feel compelled to tell, whether told for personal gain or simply because they are more appealing than the truth, while first single “Living Joy” is Kelly’s celebratory tribute to a personal loss experienced during the albums creation.

Produced with The Haxan Cloak, who released last year’s acclaimed and extreme electronic record Excavation, as well as with lie and cult hero Roly Porter.

Track Listing

1. Like Chrome

2. Tongue

3. Heart Is A Far Light

4. Salvage

5. Dans Ce

6. A Nature (Shards)

7. Living Joy

8. Fruit Tree

9. Further Not Better

Live Dates

4/16 Brooklyn St Vitus

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