alt rocker tyler cole’s ‘we’re in love & the world is ending’ is the existential masterpiece the world needs

Tyler Cole’s We’re in Love & the World Is Ending is fucking rad. It’s 10 tracks of one of the best songwriters and producers to come up in the last few years stretching his arms and showing what he can do.

The conflict in the title runs through the songs which flip between love ballads and tear-down-the-system ragers. Sometimes over the course of a single track. Usually over the course of a single track. The best of them “The Government Song” and “Blow Up Your TV!” take that conflict to extremes. The world is a fucked up place and it seems to be getting more fucked by the minute, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in it. It’s an anti-nihilist statement about finding the good in life to find the strength to fight the bad. And it doesn’t hurt that hooks are huge.

“I’m on the verge of blowing up / I’m sick of seeing Donald Trump.”

Some may come for the ballads (“Sidney Poitier” and “Next to Me”) others for the brawlers, but the songs where Cole smashes both into conflict are where the album becomes something special. The audacity of tracks like “Experimental Drugs” and “Bones Part Two” where transcendant strings waft in and out of existential crisis music is like nothing anyone else is doing right now. Look, when a Willough or a Dev Hynes guest spot isn’t even the highlight, you know you’ve got something going on. Don’t sleep on this one.