Raleigh’s The Love Language will have a new LP, Ruby Red, out July 23rd on Merge Records. Fronted by Stuart McLamb, the project began after the collapse of his band The Capulets. Following a tumultuous break-up with his girlfriend, McLamb would go on a serious drinking bender, before retreating to his parent’s house where he would record a series of demos using borrowed gear and a 4-track. The demos would lead to a full-on recording project, with The Love Language self-recorded by McLamb, and released on Portland’s Bladen County Records in 2009. The record would gain him the attention of the folks at Merge, and the label would release his 2010 LP Libraries, recorded in a studio setting this time, with producer BJ Burton.
Three years in the making, it sounds as though The Love Language’s newest LP, Ruby Red, has been quite the labored affair. Merge reports that work began in a, “windowless unit at the fabled Ruby Red”, continued for a spell in a “carpeted bungalow” in Black Mountain, North Carolina, before having to go itinerant, with the resulting record finally featuring, “over twenty musicians and straddling several time zones”. “Calm Down” is an awesome example of the kinda’ high grade Romantic pop The Love Language is capable of delivering. Shot out of the gates on propulsive drums and infectiously bouncing bass, while, sonically, really packing pounds for punch with a big room sound, it is ultimately McLamb’s voice that makes this truly transcendent pop-with his clean, powerful, and yet somehow aching tones really ringing out on the refrain, “You won’t let me calm down”. And, for McLamb, that sound like a good thing!
