If You Leave is the album you get out when things have thoroughly hit the fan, dripping with melancholy and, at times, emotional collapse. If You Leave is a ten song story that needs to be listened to as a collective. It’s one of the first albums in a while that feels like the songs benefit from working as a whole, rather than just a collection of really, really good songs. From the outset, If You Leave feels suffocating; it feels as though all these emotions are thrown on your all at once. Album opener ‘Winter’ sets the scene for the rest of the album, with Elena Tonra’s bitterly sweet vocals gliding through fragile but simultaneously heavy guitar lines, laying out the post-break up swirl of emotion: “Wait for me to degrade before you go”. But somehow, despite this feeling of suffocation, the lyrics sometimes akin to a high school girl’s diary (“we’re setting fire to our insides for fun” on single ‘Youth’) and often one-note theme running throughout the album, there’s a real sincerity here. Bubbling under the surface of Tonra’s beautifully destroyed vocals and Igor Haefeli’s understated and atmospheric guitar work is hope. It takes until the end of the album to finally reach the surface but, by the time it does, it feels like you’ve been on a journey, that this final section of emotional triumph is only made as great as it is by the suffering that preceded it. ‘Shallows’ is an 11 minute finale that feels like a warm bath after being dragged through the dirt and bushes for a good hour or so.
But even when we are going through the dirt and bushes, it’s an experience to treasure. The emotional breakdown present in Tonra’s vocals (I know I keep coming back to this but they really are beautiful in an affecting way) working in sync alongside the rise and fall of Remi Aguilella’s percussion feels enormously cathartic. It’s a mix that just hasn’t been done properly since Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service found “love”, whatever that is. At points, If You Leave occasionally even manages to surpass some of Death Cab’s most bleak yet beautiful moments.
This is an album that needs to be taken as a whole. Sit in a dark room with headphones on (OK, probably don’t do that) and just listen. This isn’t an album you can just listen to snippets of on Soundcloud, it’s one that needs experiencing, taking in every inch of the emotional journey until the triumphant conclusion. It has an arc, gliding from break up, through self-doubt (“All my children can become me, what a mess I leave to follow” Tonra sings on ‘Smother’), to the light at the end of the tunnel in ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Shallows’ (“Dry your smoke stung eyes so you can see the light”).
5/5
Recommended download: “Youth”
