Listen: Warpaint teases new album with 'Love is to Die'

Listen: Warpaint teases new album with ‘Love is to Die’

Warpaint lead singer Emily Kokal at the Troubadour in 2010.

By Todd Martens

Oct. 29, 2013 8:15 AM PT

Shortly after locals Warpaint released debut album “The Fool” in October 2010, the band laid out a musical mission statement during an interview with Pop & Hiss. “Things,” said bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, “aren’t going to be super-defined.”

Warpaint on Monday unleashed its first proper teaser for its upcoming second album, a recently wrapped self-titled effort due Jan. 21 on Rough Trade. The song, “Love is to Die,” isn’t super-defined.

“Love is to Die” has all the major trappings of a rock song. There are guitars, there are drums and there’s the hypnotic vocal harmonies that Warpaint mastered on “The Fool.” But if it weren’t for drummer Stella Mozgawa punching the song to a close at just shy of the five-minute mark, it’s quite possible that “Love is to Die” would become an aural Möbius band.

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When “Love is to Die” opens, the song feels as if it’s on high alert. The rhythm cracks, pops and scrapes, the sound of someone leaving in a hurry. Behind it creeps an ambient noise, the type Hollywood composers use to telegraph a distress call. Warpaint is preparing the listener for a thriller, and in just a few seconds vocalist Emily Kokal will be asking someone to call 911.

Maybe -- but not every syllable is entirely audible, and “Love is to Die” doesn’t aim for clarity. Or maybe it’s searching for it but never quite finds it. That’s the kind of dizzying headcase of a trap the song forges.

Because by the 30-second mark, the tone of the song has drastically shifted. There’s still panic here -- one doesn’t say “I’m not alive ... enough” when there isn’t -- but emotions are now moving in slow motion. Mozgawa’s wood-pecking beat returns, a reminder that something is in fact at stake here, while Theresa Wayman’s guitar seems to liquefy around Lindberg’s anxious pulse of a groove.

When Kokal gets around to singing the title of the song in the chorus, her voice doesn’t exactly sound fragile but it does feel in danger of disappearing. And then she corrects herself. “Love is to not die.” But the rug hasn’t been pulled out from under us.

Eventually, Kokal gives up on words all together. She doesn’t exactly wail or moan, which would imply pain or ecstasy, but there is an unsettling complacency about her cries. Whether love is to die or it isn’t, the destination is ultimately in the same: in the dark.

The new song is embedded below, and Warpaint has been previewing a significant portion of the album in its live shows. For the record, the quartet worked with a pair of producers and mixers who know a thing or two about crafting a mood, including Flood, whose credits include the Smashing Pumpkins and PJ Harvey, along with honorary Radiohead team member Nigel Godrich.