1) Beauty Is the Beast; 2) Father of a Son; 3) Tell Me This Night Is Over; 4) Calleth You, Cometh I; 5) A Virgin Like You; 6) Interlude; 7) Tired of Being an Object?; 8) Vendelay; 9) Disease; 10) 2000 Light-Years of Darkness; 11) The Most Radical Thing to Do
The Ark's imperial phase record, perfecting their tricks and sound and delivering an incredible record with it.
Key tracks: "Tell Me This Night Is Over", "Calleth You, Cometh I", "The Most Radical Thing to Do"
In Lust We Trust is the big blockbuster sequel to The Ark’s debut We Are The Ark. The stakes are higher, the explosions are bigger and the drama is more intense, all tailor-made for a grand big screen experience. The plot beats are familiar from the first go-around but the actors are more familiar with their roles and the script is tighter, and by this point this allegory is really starting to stretch thin but the point should be clear. In summary, The Ark’s second album is largely the same as the first, but everything has been upscaled. Good job The Ark are extravagant by nature, so blowing things bigger works perfectly with their propensity for universal emotions and towering pop hooks.
Sometimes albums are great simply because everyone involved is bringing in their A-game and it reflects in the music, and this is absolutely the case with In Lust We Trust in a nutshell. The tricks the band pull off are familiar from the first album and The Ark are still riding on their timeless glam rock revival route, but everything is better than the last time around (when it was already really good): as an album it's more consistent, more dynamic, and crafted with a clear vision in mind to create a larger than life experience. In Lust We Trust is undeniably a bigger album than the debut and as said, that grandeur really works in the band’s favour because of who they are and that they’ve got the gusto to pull it off. The biggest example of this is most obviously “2000 Light-Years of Darkness”, the crescendo epic towards the tail end of the record which flows so naturally that the near ten-minute length feels like under five, because not a moment of it is wasted: the bright backing vocals and shimmering guitar lines switch into the extended finale that burns brighter and brighter the higher it reaches. It hardly even sounds like the most bombastic thing on the record, it simply sustains its fireworks the longest.
The Ark know what they're going for and sound far more confident about their own shtick on In Lust We Trust, and at times come close to aggressively direct in their methods and how in-your face they are about them. If the initial singles from the first album talked about accepting oneself and gently dropped a few quick LGBT mentions in the process to direct you in the right context, on In Lust We Trust's lead single “Father of a Son” Salo straight-on slaps off any naysayers, concluding with “I may be gay but I can tell you straight away / I’ll be a better father than all of you anyway”. A lesser frontman would stumble lines on like that, but Salo’s brash attitude is infectious - he’s absolutely not taking any prisoners this time around and he's got the charisma to back his occasionally corny but often excellent wordsmansmith. And where Salo goes, the rest of the band follows in his wake, all guns blazing.
Apply this across all eleven tracks (including the surprisingly good interlude) and you basically have In Lust We Trust all figured out. The Ark are turning up the dials but they work the hell out of it, e.g. the gospel choir on “Tell Me This Night Is Over” only elevates the already gorgeous track by turning into the skyscraper of drama it aches to be, particulary when the call-and-answer parts begin, and “Calleth You, Cometh I” is more or less the perfect pop song in its relentless brightness and shine because it’s not afraid to go really big and loud in its glorious burst of a chorus. “A Virgin Like You” and “Disease” offer some subtlety without breaking the consistency, even as the latter threatens to swoon into a kind of morbid goth disco during its big handclap choruses. Even the side tracts work: the sitar-affected “Vendelay” is a curiously jaunty little number that takes a big breather away from the glam-rock bangers of the rest of the record, but it fits where it's been placed, carries enough of the same tone and sound to its peers that it doesn't sound like it's in the wrong company and it still manages to rise to the occasion towards its end. There are no misses, no inconsistencies or tripping points on In Lust We Trust - it's an album by a band doing what they do best and absolutely nailing it, which is so unexciting to write about but so thrilling to listen to.
The best is saved for the last. Once “2000 Light-Years of Darkness” has faded away, a delicate string section acts as a pre-gap intermission before “The Most Radical Thing to Do” quite literally punches into life through it. “The Most Radical Thing to Do” is The Ark at their absolute peak condition, bringing together In Lust We Trust in form and concept. The album’s confrontational attitude and rock and roll power roll up into a hedonistic credo that swaggers cockily through its verses, which then suavely cruise into the chorus that brings back those interlude strings and where Salo’s voice moves from brash to vulnerable and the lyrics whiplash the sentiment of the verses. The veneer and facade of all that bravado is replaced with genuine sentimentality: so much of the magic of The Ark’s first two albums rests in how Salo manages to make perhaps corny sentiments work through the power of his writing pen and his beast of a performance, and once again he genuinely sells the desperation and hope he pulls from the simple declaration of equal love as a force. As a closer “The Most Radical Thing to Do” brings the grand curtain call that calls for a standing ovation, but perhaps even more importantly it's another song that resonated in a questioning teen like me and made feel more comfortable about my own preferences. “It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane” (which was guided by similar themes and affected by the same resonance) from the debut will always be my favourite The Ark song but “The Most Radical Thing to Do” stays so close the two are practically holding hands.
With In Lust We Trust The Ark secured their place in my personal canon, only two albums in. This is despite the fact that in (brutal) honesty, they started sliding downhill pretty suddenly and steadily right after this and never recovered before they called it a day, which normally “dooms” artists to be relegated to the sidelines for me. But these first two albums are simply so great that you can’t just go on and ignore the band when they’ve delivered something of their caliber, and everything across In Lust We Trust in particular radiates the strength of musicians experiencing their imperial phase and smoothly cruising through a seemingly endless pool of creativity. It's reminiscent of the kind of power associated with classic rock albums and how they can make an audience roar from the loud and invigorating power of people playing together on a stage; just less power chords, more feather boas and none of the clichés. Almost like The Ark looked at the magnum opuses of their favourites from their record collection and collectively determined that they can absolutely do the same, completely effortlessly.
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