White Lies - White lies for dark souls

And there’s a part of me that still believes

My soul will soar above the trees

But a desperate fear flows through my blood

That our dead love’s buried beneath the mud

Let’s grow old together

And die at the same time

Let’s grow old together

And die at the same time

(“To Lose My Life”)

The First Steps

Charles Cave and Jack Lawrence-Brown, both from the village of Pitshanger in the north London area of Ealing, had their first experience as musicians during a school show held at North Ealing Primary School. Harry McVeigh, originally from the Shepherd's Bush neighborhood in the Fulham area, joined them a couple of years later.

It was thus that, between 2002 and 2003, the trio of fifteen-year-olds began playing together under the moniker Fear of Flying, with McVeigh on lead vocals and guitar, Cave on bass and Lawrence-Brown on drums - roles that would remain fixed in the years to come.

Initially started as a classic "weekend project", Fear of Flying, thanks to some good instincts and an inevitable pinch of luck, found themselves completing a UK tour as support to such esteemed acts as Maccabees, Libertines, Good Shoes and Laura Marling.

After releasing two singles in 2006 for the independent label Young and Lost Club ("Routemaster/ Round Three" and "Three's A Crowd/ Forget-Me-Nots"), both produced by Stephen Street (Blur, Smiths), Fear of Flying carried on playing live to an ever-growing following, right up until October 2007 - a pivotal moment for the future of their artistic journey.

Exactly two weeks before university was due to start, they made the bold yet providential decision to take the classic gap year and try writing new material more in keeping with their true artistic character, firmly moving away from everything they had done up to that point.

Cave, the band's main songwriter, said he no longer felt able to write satisfying material and that only through pure imagination could he have forged semi-comic stories, probably useless and embarrassing ones.

Fear of Flying split up right in the course of October, with a laconic statement posted on their official Myspace account (soon deleted afterwards) that read verbatim: "Fear Of Flying is DEAD … White Lies is alive!", closing their era without any further ceremony and forcefully opening the doors to the story of White Lies.

The English music scene (and beyond) was changing radically. The fierce resurgence of interest in sounds from the bleak new wave and post-punk era had given the band plenty to think about.

With the introduction of sounds more in line with their current interests, and in search of a new name that would properly reflect both their artistic growth and their chosen change of direction, the definitive name came after some research into so-called "white lies" — convenient false truths, indecipherable deceptions. An intriguing, mysterious concept that fits perfectly with the icy atmospheres and the piercing themes that would become the unmistakable hallmark of their style.

The debut comes with a bang!

Under their new name, Cave, McVeigh and Lawrence-Brown played their first show on 28 February 2008 at the Bar & Kitchen venue in Hoxton Square.

The band admitted they had spent several months polishing the set they chose, aiming to skilfully win over the media and make the most of any positive momentum that might follow. The choice paid off: after the performance, numerous offers came in from various labels. A few days after that fortunate show, White Lies signed their first record deal with Fiction Records, perhaps with half an eye on the glories of their seminal artistic muses.

Shortly after came their television debut, on 30 May on "Later… With Jools Holland", an occasion that let them introduce the public to two new songs, "Unfinished Business" and "Death", both also released as singles. It was a buzzing summer season, marked by warm receptions at the UK's major festivals and their first national tour, supporting Glasvegas on numerous dates, with a stint in the United States for about ten shows as well.

The second half of 2008 saw mounting anticipation for the long-awaited debut. The band scheduled recording sessions at ICP Studios in Belgium and Kore Studios in London. A provisional deadline was set for January 2009, with the working title "To Lose My Life Or Lose My Love".

Indeed, as exclusively reported by NME.com, on 12 January 2009 White Lies' first full-length was officially released under its definitive, shortened title To Lose My Life, a record preceded a week earlier by the release of the title-track single, whose video had already premiered on 21 November.

The album surprisingly shot straight to number one, propelled by the fierce drive of the title track, which, rather unexpectedly, began playing non-stop on radio and TV across Europe.

White Lies' darkwave imprint doesn't break any particularly new ground, though it does boast genuine, brilliant hooks — not exactly standard for such atmospheres — harking back to the glory days of the early '80s, the golden era when the deep darkness of sounds and themes went hand in hand with a resounding comeback in sales and interest.

The murky imagery running through the grooves can't help but evoke the unforgettable exploits of Joy Division, Echo And The Bunnymen and the very early U2, all acts that, to varying degrees, surface within the fabric of the songwriting.

The singles "Unfinished Business" and "Death" are steeped in pessimism and existential nihilism, not just in their melodies. McVeigh's voice is pained, baritone, very close to that of Tom Smith of Editors, a band from which, with all due caveats, White Lies draw further inspiration: guitars sweeping and steeped in tar-black mud, piercing bass, and the same gothic-romantic spleen of fallen young angels lost amid earthly miseries, searching for an impossible, redemptive ideal of aesthetic purity. The addition of occasional orchestral flourishes and, at times, organ textures lends a touch of sublime contrition.

Some more danceable forays can be heard in tracks like "E.S.T." and especially "Farewell To The Fairground", a compelling, well-structured song — perhaps the best on the whole tracklist — accompanied by an evocative video shot amid the icy plains of the Russian town of Nikel.

The positive streak they'd carved out led White Lies to plan a headlining tour on an entirely different scale from the one they'd done just a year before. Touring musicians Tommy Bowen (keyboards) and Rob Lee (guitar) were added to the original line-up, initially brought in just for live performances, but who would prove, over time, to be invaluable collaborators on the band's subsequent studio recordings as well. It was a magical moment: sold-out dates not only across Britain but in numerous European cities, as well as in North America and Japan, invitations to countless collaborations, award nominations, increasingly high-profile TV appearances, and poll after poll topped — and, naturally, all the best summer stages, where this time they featured as eagerly awaited headliners rather than mere outsiders to keep an eye on.

After supporting Snow Patrol on their tour, Kings Of Leon across the United States, and Coldplay — including a majestic show at Wembley Stadium — the band decided to take a break from writing new material to focus entirely on live performance. In an interview with the BBC, McVeigh explained that, given the particular nature of the band's songwriting process, fitting it in alongside the demanding rigours of touring would have been risky, and that there would be no new release until 2010. McVeigh also admitted that the ambitious sound of "Nothing To Give" and "The Price Of Love" from the debut album had been meant as a taste of the different direction the band's sound was heading in.

In September 2009 the band released the track "Taxidermy" on digital platforms, a fan favourite in live performances that had previously only appeared in an early vinyl pressing of the debut album.

Due to a throat issue affecting McVeigh during the show in Munich in autumn 2009, some tour dates had to be rescheduled for the early months of the following year.

The creative peak

On 13 and 14 February 2010 the band played at FAC 251 in Manchester, a venue born from the renovation of the historic Factory Records building. Both shows sold out within minutes, with around 38,000 people trying to grab just 400 available tickets.

In November, the first confirmations arrived regarding the gestation of the much-anticipated sophomore album.

Ritual was released on 17 January 2011, preceded two weeks earlier by the lead single "Bigger Than Us".

Building on what had come before, Ritual went straight in at number three on the British charts, confirming the solid following the London band had by now built up.

The ten tracks that make up the album show no obvious stylistic departures, coming across, more than anything, as a natural continuation of the path already taken.

White Lies confirm themselves as refined devotees of classic new wave sounds, which, compared to the previous album and thanks to a bigger budget, appear denser and more layered thanks to sonic devices (strings, rhythmic patterns, electronic touches) crafted by the excellent Alan Moulder, the accomplished producer who had already worked with Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins and Death Cab For Cutie.

The well-judged interplay of sturdy riffs, contrasting melodies and beds of synths and mostly vintage electronic drums unfolds within a dizzying web of references.

Among the best moments is the sinister crescendo of "Is Love", the intricate pot-pourri of "Strangers", and the muscular guitars mixed with electrifying vibrations of "Holy Ghost". "Peace & Quiet" builds gradually, thanks to vintage keyboards à-la Depeche Mode, while "Streetlights" is an enjoyable exercise that revives the more synthetic sounds of the Eighties.

The tour that followed comprised eleven UK dates, before continuing around the rest of the world, taking in the major summer festivals (Glastonbury, T In The Park, Lollapalooza, Rock am Ring) and joining the tours of Thirty Seconds To Mars and Kings Of Leon.

2012 was spent almost entirely writing the third album. As a result, the band's usual frantic live schedule was scaled back to a handful of still-significant summer festival appearances (Latitude Festival, Prague City Festival, Zurich Openair).

In an interview given to NME in January 2013, bassist Charles Cave revealed that the new record would be released by the end of the summer. Some early signs arrived as soon as June 4th with the release of a new, previously unheard track ("Getting Even") as a free download on the band's Soundcloud page; on the same date it was also revealed that the final title would be Big TV, once again produced by trusted collaborator Ed Buller and mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent (Bjork, Hurts, Duran Duran).

In July, White Lies unveiled some new songs over the course of three intimate shows at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, the venue that had hosted their live debut five years earlier. The event was perfectly documented by the live recording that appeared shortly after on all the major digital platforms.

Preceded a week earlier by the first official single "There Goes Our Love Again", Big TV was released on August 12, 2013 by Fiction Records in Europe, while Harvest and Universal handled distribution in the United States and Canada respectively.

The album debuted at number four on the UK charts, marking a more melodic stylistic shift compared to their previous work, now built around a concept that traces the story of a couple who decide to leave provincial life behind and move into the lights and shadows of the big city.

The risk of running aground on the shoals of an early loss of inspiration was the English band's biggest concern. On Big TV, White Lies sound, perhaps for the first time, genuinely confident in their own abilities, combining the epic scope of their original sound with a brightness that would have been hard to predict from a band that, only a few years earlier, favoured the grim tones and content of songs like "Death" and "To Lose My Life".

Tracks like "There Goes Our Love Again", "Mother Tongue" and the title track are a genuine breath of fresh air, as sweeping and sumptuous as ever in McVeigh and co.'s signature style, but opening up towards sunnier atmospheres.

For longtime fans, a few lifelines are still thrown out: "Be Your Man", "Tricky To Love" and above all the superb "Getting Even", with its pathos-laden build, closely recall the new wave sound of their early days, pushing its harmonic development forward with real maturity.

In August 2013, White Lies made their debut as headliners on the main stage at the Reading and Leeds festivals, followed by a lengthy promotional tour around the world that would also take up much of the following year.

To celebrate their ongoing live activity, on November 6th the band released a limited-edition, five-track EP on Fiction Records titled Small TV, featuring covers of Lana Del Rey and Prince as well as new versions of some of their own songs.

The desire to reinvent themselves

After a 2015 written off as a classic gap year, the English band left Fiction Records to sign with Infectious Music, a label belonging to the BMG family, and began working on new material.

Friends, White Lies' fourth album, came out on October 7, 2016, debuting at number eleven on the sales chart.

The new project marks a further evolution in the band's sound, leaning much more heavily than before on electronics, which also reveals a step up in the quality of the songwriting. The album fearlessly chases the perfect melody, drawing with great energy on the synth-pop of their beloved decade. Even McVeigh's voice, genuinely close to Ian McCulloch's, lends weight to the idea that Friends is their true "pop turn", just as the 1987 self-titled album was for Echo And The Bunnymen.

The first singles "Take It Out On Me" and "Come On", while not especially indicative of the new direction being taken, feature musical structures that recall the most ecstatic post-punk, falling back on eighties synthetic territory, albeit reworked with a more contemporary feel.

"Hold Back Your Love" and "Don't Want To Feel It All" are very catchy, enjoyable songs, but it's above all on "Is My Love Enough?" that the band's energetic wave bearing blends perfectly with the wealth of synthesizers used to masterfully colour the instrumental depth. An absolute delight for anyone who loved the Eighties era.

The new, more euphoric direction they've taken finally frees them from the cumbersome comparison that, since their earliest days, had lumped them in with those picking up the torch lit by the art of Ian Curtis. The transformation they've undergone instead finds greater affinity with repertoires closer to Cars or Secret Machines, reaching toward some of the postmodern ideas born from the mind of David Byrne and his Talking Heads, both in terms of musical composition and lyric writing.

After touring the world playing the biggest arenas and securing a permanent spot in the line-ups of the best international festivals, White Lies also land in Italy — a country that had, to be fair, always been on their radar — where they deliver excellent shows in July 2017 in Ferrara and Sestri Levante. But it's above all in Treviso, in August of the following year, that a performance of exceptional quality surprisingly lodges itself in the trio's memory, so much so that the band repeatedly brings it up in numerous interviews given in the following months. But the White Lies machine allows itself little rest and, now bolstered by lasting stability, begins charting the course for a new chapter.

After wrapping up recording sessions for new material between London and San Francisco in spring and summer 2018, on September 17th the band announced that the new LP would be released on the first day of February 2019 via PIAS Recordings, simply titled Five. Alongside the announcement, as per usual, came "Time To Give", the first single taken from the album, gradually followed by "Believe It" and "Finish Line", two more tracks that paved the way for the release of the eagerly awaited new record.

The main feature of Five is the return of guitars to the spotlight, in place of the synthesizers that, while still omnipresent (see the excellent "Time To Give", with its long instrumental tail), had been the absolute protagonists of the previous Friends. It's precisely this shift toward a more guitar-driven sound that caused the split with Bmg, who were pushing for more radio-friendly material.

The renewed blend of guitars and synthesizers propels White Lies toward a more balanced and, if you will, more experimental sound than in the past, positioned between guitar-oriented new wave and melodic synth-pop — probably the band's most natural territory, considering all the ingredients that have shaped their artistic evolution since their debut. The record, which entered the UK charts at number fourteen, was once again produced by Ed Buller, a true pioneer when it comes to steering the stylistic ambitions of whoever enlists him.

Tracks like "Kick Me" and "Tokyo" are absolute hits, the first with seductive chords underpinning a refrain that lodges itself in your head on first listen, the second more rhythmic and propelled by Cave's powerful bass, much like "Denial" with its chorus fired straight at you without hesitation. Guitars take absolute center stage on tracks like "Finish Lane", acoustic and melancholic, while for fans of more aggressive riffs there's "Jo?" and especially "Believe It", a pyrotechnic singer-songwriter-flavored post-punk track cranked up to the nth degree, mainly thanks to its vigorous, infectious chorus.

The album was reissued nine months later in an updated version, digital-only (Five V2), with the addition of two new tracks that confirm just how ingrained that dark enjoyability has become in McVeigh & co.'s DNA, even in the more formulaic episodes ("Hurt My Heart") which by now reliably prove to be winning cards.

But the busy 2019 calendar is a reminder that the band's successful debut To Lose My Life turned ten that year. It was therefore only right to mark the occasion with a special commemorative release, which hit the shelves of the best retailers on October 25th, restored and expanded, including B-sides, previously unreleased demos, live tracks and some prestigious remixes (Crystal Castles, M83).

The reissue also came with an exclusive release, split into three parts and reserved for digital platforms only, of an appendix titled Songs Of The Key Of Death, aimed at sharing unreleased live adaptations of the hits taken from To Lose My Life.

Following an almost perfectly three-year cadence, at the start of 2022 the London trio released As I Try Not To Fall Apart, their sixth studio album, a work that continues expanding the sonic landscape they've been building.

The four singles released in sequence ahead of the album turned out to be a creative crescendo that made up for some worrying hesitations shown at the end of September, when the digital release of the title track was meant to serve as the main preview of what would follow in the months ahead.

The track comes across as a no more than pleasant blend of synthetic alchemy that always seems (but never actually manages) on the verge of opening up into broader horizons.

The situation started taking on a different shape with the following track, "I Don't Wanna Go To Mars", which took on the task of bringing the English trio back to the typical post-punk sounds of their early days, built on soaring guitars and a driving rhythm.

The lightbulb moment came further into focus with the release of "Am I Really Going To Die", a fresh and appealing opening toward sounds that combine their beloved new wave aplomb with lively indie-pop structures: a burst of energy effective enough to spark curiosity about what was still to come.

The task of escorting the full-length to its official release fell to "Blue Drift", a track in perfect White Lies style.

The excellent form shown by Cave, McVeigh and Lawrence-Brown, always backed by Ed Buller's lavish production, is fully confirmed by the rest of the tracklist: while “Breathe” officially pokes around in White Lies territory, mining the eighties elegance of Tears For Fears to excellent effect, “Step Outside” flows into curious half-and-half winks between funk and the cockiness of Franz Ferdinand, leaving ample room for the dizzying post-punk of “Roll December”, the rarefied instrumental theatrics of “The End” and the well-managed forays into prog-rock territory on “Ragworm”.

“There Is No Cure For It” closes the album by reconnecting with the sound of the opener “Am I Really Going To Die”, though it comes out ahead thanks to its more urgent drive.

Conceptually too, the two parts link up in a story dealing with the reflections of a deluded businessman who arrogantly refuses to accept his own inevitable end.

White Lies, without reaching eternal heights, confirm once again that they're a band in great shape, one that has fully absorbed its own golden background with great maturity and managed to merge it with more complex, expansive sounds.

In November 2025, White Lies return with a new studio effort: Night Light, released on PIAS / Play It Again Sam. The album picks up the threads of the past, but loses something along the way. The wave-driven charge of “Nothing On Me”, the umpteenth dark gem “In The Middle”, and the spot-on ballad “All The Best” represent the high points of this set. The verdict turns cooler when it comes to a wobbly “Juice”, despite containing McVeigh's best vocal performance and a fine solo, or worse, with the rarefied “Everything Is Ok”, delivered in Springsteen-esque fashion.

Things don't improve with the harmless midtempo “Going Nowhere” or the pretentious yet introverted “I Just Win One More Time”, evidence of a set that's grown heavier even in running time, with songs often clocking in around the five-minute mark. Better, then, to take refuge in the placid waters of “Keep Up”, wrapped in a subtle grace, or in a “Night Light” that recaptures the heartfelt epic quality of days gone by.

Perhaps this is precisely one of the great flaws of Night Light: the absence of that epic feeling, that sense of bold fatalism, that sacred fire that accompanied White Lies' finest moments.

Contributions by Fabio Guastalla (“Night Light”)

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