Infamous Tea & Honey show
Depression, frustration, the darkness of winter. Lake of Tears justify their reputation as melancholic rockers by creating music that is damned depressing, even by their own admission.
In an interview with Fireworks Magazine last year, frontman Daniel Brennare admitted that the band’s latest album, Illwill, is pretty much “miserable and sceptical towards the world in general.”
Sadness is the driving force behind Lake of Tears’ music; it inspires the melodies and the lyrics. It’s so overwhelming that the band has to get drunk just to rehearse in a happy frame of mind.
At least melancholia has proved a fruitful muse. Between 1994 and 2000, the band released four albums. Following a hiatus due to creative differences between themselves and with their label, they reformed in 2003 and have since released a further three albums.
While you ponder whether to immerse yourself in their lachrymose world on January 8, consider the lyrics from the titular track of Lake of Tears’ most recent album:
Poison in my blood, running through my veins
Panic disorder, growing, just the perfect day
Fever in my mind, my vision's getting dim
A purple tone is spreading on my pale skin
A cold place, such a cold place
Time is standing still but life is fading fast
Am I still here dreaming or am I dead at last
A cold place, such a cold place
Can't wake, I hang for my mistakes
Cold fact, my life will always be black
Dead race, a bitter place, cold,
Black, fucked!
Cheerful, cheerful stuff.
RMB220 at the door, 8pm. Mao Livehouse, 3/F, 308 Chongqing Nan Lu, by Jianguo Zhong Lu (6232 3071, 6232 6916)
