Review: Miss FD – Love Never Dies

Full disclosure, we’ve got a huge soft spot for the erstwhile Frightdoll. She’s become one of the very small cadre of artists we go to the wall for simply because she’s filling an important vacuum, combining the dark with the melodic, the ugly themes with beautiful sounds (and sometimes exactly the other way around). She is fast building a deserved reputation as one of the potentially most important electronic music artists out there, and yes, we’re fully down with the Miss FD action.

Alright, that out of the way, what of the efficiently constructed “bigger-than-an-EP-not-quite-a-full-length-album” Love Never Dies? Well, biases aside, she’s recorded a wonderfully beguiling, sometimes challenging and always compelling follow-up to the terrific Monsters in the Industry. Appropriately released on Valentine’s Day, the album explores themes of love and wanting, but not in a particularly happy way. Lyrically extremely sad, one does not finish their time with Miss FD feeling particularly exultant, but when one listens closely they hear exactly how deep, and layered and absolutely beautiful this collection is.

It’s a tonally quieter and instrumentally a little bit more stripped down from her last album. Piano plays a much more prominent role and adds a lovely, gothy, melodramatic flair to the proceedings. And while the whole thing feels slowed down there are a few beat-generated tracks that keep the pulse firing, like the staccato-beat “Cry For You”, or the terrific lead track, “Moment of Fade”.

Most strikingly are Miss FD’s vocals which are shed of much of the distortion we heard on Monsters in the Industry, and the clearer, purer vocal reveals how pretty her voice actually is (and sometimes, stripped bare, how menacing it actually is…)

It’s a corker of an album and for a largely DIY artist it’s remarkably well-produced. The sound is startlingly clean and packs a huge punch. Even as a fan Softsynth was blown away by the quality and care put into the project. She’s proven multi-talented and prolific, and if she keeps churning out albums the quality of this one, we’ll be there with her, every step of the way, all the way to the bitter, maybe sad, but ultimately rewarding end.