Moments in Love: Burial's Untrue

by Minimal

Burial’s Untrue is one of the real “loner” albums. Could you picture hearing a single one of its  songs with people? You’d be sending a very straightforward message if you had it queued up for your  friends in a car or on deck in the club: everyone, please, shut the hell up. But unlike other introspective  records (your Laughing Stocks or the legions of insular ambient and experimental recordings), it’s my opinion that Untrue thrives when you’re alone in a crowd. It’s not music to be played with people, but  around them. Some kind of clinical distance, either physical or imaginary, feels necessary to fully experience it. 

These are songs for spectators; for those that feel a necessity to simply bear witness to life, to gaze sphinxlike outside the window, to live in the wash of repeating memories. I’ve often felt that  Burial’s early work functions on this notion of separation, of removing some vital quality from a whole. Maybe you’ve felt it in his music, too: the feeling of rain without dampness, cold without its bite. Voices  echo and drift to nowhere in particular. Keys jangle, guns cock and bullet casings ricochet off the floor  over and over until they’re drained of their original context. So where else would Burial shine if not in a  public setting turned artificially private? Around people, putting on headphones transfers you to a liminal state; for others you’re “there”, but not really. Meanwhile, you’re caught seeing what can’t be  heard and hearing what can’t be seen. If you can buy that separation and distance are important to how  this music functions and is experienced, then you can understand why “Shell of Light” is such a strongly  hit note on Untrue. 

Appearing well into the back half of the album, “Shell of Light” offers the first real expression of  warmth in Burial’s discography, and it couldn’t come at a more necessary point. I understand why the  record’s first real song, “Archangel”, can scan as the tearjerker of the bunch; every time the dub  equivalent of a Greek tragedy’s chorus swells while the vocals are tweaked to the point where “couldn’t  be alone” morphs into “let it be enough”, there’s a strong chance that an ugly black pit roils in your  stomach. But for my money, it’s the title track that offers the bleakest moments. Where “Archangel” is  expressive to the point of drowning in tears, “Untrue” is more subtle. The percussion is noticeably  sharper, only to make way for an inscrutable, cold bass rumbling the track’s low end. The vocals, sampled from Beyonce and pitched down to the point of no return, are even keeled as it lets you know “it’s all because you lied” in the most ambiguous way possible. It’s clearly emotionally charged, but there’s no telling if it’s coming out as an accusation, a sudden realization, or some form of acceptance. I want to stew on it every time I hear the hook, but the surprisingly straight 2-step beat carries the song  along so quickly that it feels like I’m not meant to - like I’m supposed to be kept at arm’s length. Even  the sample of Ernie Halter suggesting “we could be friends” shoves you aside with a command to get  “away from my heart”. A synth, gently moaning against the agitated rhythm, is the most expressive part  of the track. Ironically, it’s an expression of a lack; an expression of apathy. Of something desolate and  hollow. 

After experiencing this emotional wasteland for about six minutes, “Shell of Light” opens with a  whispered voice asking for a hug and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the song. Space and  echoes still color the music, but someone finally turned on the space heater in the empty room. It’s not blistering, but the kind of warmth you feel after coming in from the cold. The bass hums a four note  melody, and the percussion is softer, more clipped in order to hit closer. Burial’s flavor of intimacy has those voices from nowhere now ask you to move in closer and sing-song “I love you so”. I really need to stress how satisfying this turn is: up to now, you’ve been barraged with thirty minutes of wounded, bleeding heart music. The longing and desire in each song is palpable, but where the hell are you  supposed to expect satisfaction? Here, you’re finally getting that love and attention you’ve been starved  for. 

However, the real heart of the song comes in its closing minute. The only way I could describe it  is, like with the rest of Burial’s output, with weather. An overcast sky breaks for a brief moment and  sunshine finally touches your face; the synths twinkle and shimmer like rays of light as they reach you.  Halter’s voice makes its return in a profoundly moving way that relies on “Untrue” for its full effect.  After invoking a prayer to God for a chance to be heard, it feels like the awful iciness and hurt of the  previous track is alluded to apologetically by admitting “I wasn’t sure”. Then, after the slightest  hesitation, a hatchet is buried while organs soothe: “we could be friends”.  

Emotionally, it’s the only point in the album where every pretense of separation and space is thrown out, and all for the simple, beautiful notions of reconciliation and understanding. It’s the kind of moment in art that can only convince you of the worth of such things. Of course, just like any break in  the clouds, it’s seen for the briefest of moments. Those big, wonderful feelings are just as quickly replaced with the plaintive sigh of the synth motif from “Untrue”, a return to the private and sullen. The loss of that warmth and understanding is sobering, maybe even enough to draw your head into your  hands. You’re left feeling the weight of standing alone, remembering what was once there that’s now -