offer us something very different to close out the narrative. Rather, painting a rainbow at the end of the album would gravely detract from its message. Let's going back to distracting ourselves with that lush bass line, shall we?ДЄs unrelenting as Duncanson's motif of degradation is, it's far from tasteless cynicism. 'When our pain is over, it's someone else's turn', Duncanson sings, 'no point in staying sober if we're going to burn'. The Stone Roses-esque jammer 'Committed To The Cause' brightens things up musically, but only to detail the endless cycle of unsatisfactory work and a culture that seems to be bleeding out. Duncanson doesn't provide many answers aside from sleep, which isn't exactly reassuring. 'Can't Be Guilty' is easily the most heartbreaking of the bunch, as Duncanson's narrative begs the question of how the guiltless many deserve the retribution enacted on a handful at the top of the financial and political system. Side B takes a decidedly more melancholy tune, as the darkly descriptive dancing subsides into more introspective reflection about the reality of the situation. All of this helps side A of Running float effortlessly above its own dark waters. While the subject matter is as heavy as can be, the bass-driven electronic groove is one that could set in for twice its staying time. Finally, the third single off the record, 'Swedish Guns', is a pretty straightforward number about violence as solution. It's another glance at a broken system whose intended audience is losing both faith and interest all the time. 'Occupied' is preceded on the record by the next best dance number, 'We Got Game'. Here, they present a younger generation looking at their aspirations, all with 'No Vacancy' signs hung outside the door. 'Occupied' presents the most abstract vision of gloom on the record, letting the pieces fall together in mental space rather than nailing them to the concrete wall. The first official single off the record was last year's 'Occupied', possibly the longest song in the band's history, and still the most worthy of its own 80s 12' extended 12 minute dance mix. have soundtrack the most heavy handed message of their career with another relative highpoint: the most danceable record. Alongside Duncanson and Larsson, we get to navigate a bleak landscape whose incentive to love is extremely low. Thus, many of the themes on Running Out of Love will be painfully relatable. it's very relevant stuff to us here in America, as we try to focus on the same issues with a population more than thirty times larger. A dwindling middle class due to right wing tax policies, higher costs for daycare with less promise of quality, more individual turns towards extremism. This is especially believable in the past decade, as Duncanson recently went on record to talk about with Pitchfork.

Or, it might be that they continue to write new records in a world that continually chooses to become worse off than the way it was when they began writing. 'For the third time in a row we have made two albums instead of one', the band explained in the introductory statement for Running Out of Love. have not had great luck writing albums in the past ten or so years.

give us the most danceable downer of the year. Societal regression continues to be the mainstay theme of 2016 as the Radio Dept. Taking a chilly turn towards more electronic textures, Duncanson and Larsson envision a bleak and beautiful outlook on, in the band's own statement, 'all the things that are moving in the wrong direction'. It's been six years since the band's third record, Clinging To A Scheme, and my, what wonders have happened in that timespan to give us less and less faith in humanity? Those four hour days in Swedish winter just seem to be getting shorter and shorter as the years pass, but that doesn't mean they can't be spent listening to top notch pop musings. If you think about it, the cynicism is merited. 'There's nothing gracious about our kind', Johan Duncanson sings on opener 'Sloboda Narodu' (yes, that is the famous Yugoslav Partisan motto), as he reflects on, well, humanity. have never been optimists, but with new record Running Out of Love, they are really going out of their way not to see any silver linings.

Radio dept this past week ep rar file