Album Review: LOVE IS THE LAW by Love Spells
The Houston-raised singer pledges everything on these love songs, swearing on hearts, inviting the bullet, and taking her back every time. Surrender pushed past dignity is his best subject.
“Our lives are centered around love,” said Love Spells this spring. “We do so much because of it and so many problems emerge from it.” Sir Taegen Harris grew up in Houston and currently performs in Los Angeles, and he created LOVE IS THE LAW on the basis of that one simple statement: songs of courtship in the old tradition of pleading, sung by a suitor on his hands and knees, offering everything he owns. “Love is the only law I think we follow and act on,” Harris says to Dork in July. And the problems come right after that pledge.
Those are the kind of problems that belong to the girl from “Don’t Touch,” who gets boys drunk intentionally, uses them throughout the whole night, keeps them calling and answering to no one. She claims the entire chorus for herself, asking “Am I a sexy baby?/Do I drive you crazy?” and laying down her rule – “look but don’t touch,” her heart unmoving. Harris takes that rule onto himself before the end of the song, and for the duration of one chorus he plays along with it. And by the time he gets to “Crutch,” he admits that maybe he put too much weight on her shoulder, and proceeds to put the charge on her—“I know you used me as a crutch,” and they pass the accusation back and forth like the last seat in the game.
Being used will be the cost that he will have to pay on “Stupid,” with her as candy and him as a sweet tooth, and “All my teeth are fallin’ out/But I just want you in my mouth.” Offers grow even dirtier for him, yet he still makes them, willing to blame the moon for his sunburn, and “Hit me, if you need someone to use,” a man bidding against himself. “Devour Me” pushes that deal to the limit. She has shot him once already; he tells her to pull the trigger, admits that death could be something he needs provided that it happens by her hand, and says that he will not fight it; he will welcome it inside. His offer to stick to her forever and always is the softest sentence in a song about being eaten alive.
His collateral is the résumé on “Perfect Man,” a clean apartment, no sleeping in his shirt and jeans, two phone calls a week to his mother, his last dollar on stake on their date. “I kiss you slowly like turtles in a race,” he offers an admission so goofy that it is also a recommendation of a character. And then he adds that he keeps track of how many times they make love, knows every single tear she sheds while crying, and the boyfriend of the year becomes a court reporter, dictating the transcript of their marriage which hasn’t started yet. He protects their union just as strictly on “Keep It to Yourself,” where arguments are kept indoor, her friends are not getting any updates, and should those two break apart, she can keep the announcement until the next world. “Everybody doesn’t deserve access to the sacred between two people,” Harris says about that song. “Sometimes love, and its problems are better off left unsaid.” His vows get official on “LOVE IS THE LAW,” Rick Nowels nails the baritone guitar, and Harris states, “Don’t you go treatin’ me bad,” no playing with his heart and breaking his statutes, “Baby, you’re meant for my arms/Like your name’s meant for my tongue,” swearing with his right hand up.
The courting gets less intense on “Kiss Me Slow This Time,” his destination her hips, his heart fitted in like a nest, answers to his test in her hands, and his pickup line is “My doorbell sounds just like your moan,” something that the drugstore would have rejected as Valentine copy. “I’ve Tried” leers where the other coasts, his lips asking him to kiss them, his eyes demanding to listen, and then comes the line “But those thighs, they talk to me and whisper,” and the date is over right there.
He burns everything she gave him on “Heart for Eyes,” sticks to his mattress, “I laid in bed all day/And thought myself into a grave,” and then starts giving her the advice he never follows —be careful whom you let into your home, be careful who spends your time, don’t fall for it. Day Wave produced “Until We Get It Right,” and in it Harris contemplates what he signed up for and still stays with it. “You’ve always been the street/You’ve never been my home,” he tells her, promising to take her back however many times it may take. She can leave, he thinks, but she will not go far, and no matter how many times she returns, he will still be up with the lights on.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Don’t Touch,” “Stupid,” “Until We Get It Right”