"Love & Other Lies teems with a dark sentimentality and a pronounced gloomy sensibility drawing from British new wave, post-punk, goth, and 1960s rock n’ roll. Strains of The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tears for Fears, and even The Beatles abound. Hegna’s emotive baritone is swathed in period-perfect Prophet-5 synthesizers and glistening counter-melody guitars lines, and supported by intricate but lyrical basslines and cold and mechanical drums.

The lyrics are veiled, visceral, and abstract, yet peppered with shard’s of truth from Hegna’s life and his observations. They reflect a modern world where reality itself feels increasingly tenuous, truth is subjective, communities are shattered by irreconcilable division, and a collective malaise hangs in the air. In this dystopia, if love is merely another lie, it suggests a bleak outlook for our future; essentially, the title is a fancy way of saying that “We Are All Fucked.”

Love & Other Lies picks up where it’s previous album, Reverb & Seduction, left off. That album was a radical departure from Federale’s previous releases which featured mostly instrumentals. “There are a lot more similarities than you think,” he says of the group’s seemingly two distinct aesthetic periods. “When we were referencing the obscure influences, we liked the drama and darkness. Those elements are in new wave, goth, and post-punk. I just grabbed another couple of colors from the Crayon box.”