Lovedrug finds the search for love to be epic. It's breathtaking and it's momentous, possibly multiple times over. It keeps giving us a helluva time. It kicks and it pinches and it pushes back for so long and then it encourages us to come closer, to lean in and then all bets are off. It's usually one of those anomalies - temporary ruse, but then, other times it's nothing like that at all. Sometimes it becomes something that makes your chest feel like the broadside of a barn or as if were filled with live wires plunked down in a puddle.
"Wild Blood," the song and the record that it names, are two connected expressions of exasperated dealings with irrational feelings and the untamed fluids and oils that are running every body. There's bad news following good news, good news following bad news and all kinds of garbled up messages, light touches and embraces that last too long or not long enough. There's a sense that we're all our own worst enemies, but if there was just a moment to see things clearly, there would be an opportunity to recognize how close we actually were to some sweet pocket of satisfaction.
Michael Shepard, the lead singer for the band from Canton, Ohio, which started back in 2001, finds himself wrapped up in the emotions that waft off of a worked up person, off of someone who's come close, who feels like they can help someone else get to where they want to be. He says that he's "a love maker," and, on "Anodyne," that he could "be the love that you're chasing so hard." It's the love that's been chased for so long. It's a wonder that the characters in Lovedrug songs don't just flat-out pass out from sheer exhaustion. They sound as if they've used up all of their reserves, fighting through most of the wasted sentiments and wrong people for them. They'll be damned if they give up now though.