B-Side Guys

Not all love songs are about love. UTU’s “Love Collection: By the Ashes That Used to Be the Everlasting Fire” explores this paradox across ten tracks that refuse easy categorization. Through vocalist Petra Poutanen’s unflinching lyrics and the band’s genre-defying arrangements, what emerges is less a celebration of love than an autopsy of it.

“Reality Beats All Dreams” opens the collection with startling directness, examining love’s capacity for violence while blending dream pop textures with experimental edges. The juxtaposition between ethereal sounds and brutal imagery sets the tone for what’s to come.

“The Worst Is Yet to Come” continues this exploration through darker territory. The band’s diverse musical backgrounds shine here, with chamber pop arrangements providing deceptively beautiful settings for lyrics about secrets and inevitable revelations. The production maintains perfect tension between accessibility and experimentation.

“It Must Have Been Love at First Hit” emerges as one of the album’s most powerful statements. Playing with the familiar phrase “love at first sight,” UTU creates something both familiar and disturbing. The arrangement moves from indie pop sweetness to more challenging textures, mirroring love’s evolution from initial attraction to complex reality.

“In The Snow I Look Dead But I Just Pretend” provides one of the album’s most poetic moments, using the metaphor of a tree through seasons to explore cycles of love and hatred. The production here is particularly noteworthy, creating sonic spaces that feel both intimate and expansive.

The album’s middle section, including “All the Love” and “Happy to Be Sad,” demonstrates UTU’s gift for finding beauty in darkness. These tracks showcase how art pop can tackle complex emotional themes without losing its essential musicality. Poutanen’s lyrics here are particularly striking, finding fresh ways to examine familiar emotional territory.

“Waterfall” marks a shift in both tone and arrangement, introducing more electronic elements while maintaining the album’s thematic focus. The transformation metaphors in the lyrics find perfect companions in the music’s evolving textures.

“The Woman of My Dreams” stands as perhaps the album’s boldest statement, subverting expectations of a love song by turning the gaze inward. The arrangement builds from indie pop foundations into something more experimental, supporting lyrics that examine self-love without sentimentality.

“Money Into Love” explores transactional aspects of relationships with remarkable nuance. The band creates a sound that’s both dreamy and grounded, allowing Poutanen’s lyrics about desire and need to land with full impact.

The collection closes with “Oh, Sorrow,” a track that somehow manages to find hope without abandoning the album’s clear-eyed examination of love’s complexities. The full range of the band’s capabilities comes into play here, from chamber pop delicacy to experimental boldness.

What sets “Love Collection” apart is its refusal to look away from love’s darker aspects while maintaining musical beauty. While many albums exploring similar themes might descend into pure darkness, UTU finds ways to illuminate the shadows without pretending they don’t exist.

The production throughout serves this duality perfectly. Dream pop elements provide accessibility while experimental touches keep listeners engaged at deeper levels. The band’s diverse musical backgrounds create arrangements that surprise without alienating.

Poutanen’s lyrics deserve special mention for their poetic precision and emotional honesty. Whether examining love’s violence, its transactional nature, or its capacity for transformation, she finds fresh language for familiar feelings. The writing maintains literary quality while remaining singable – no small feat.

At its heart, “Love Collection: By the Ashes That Used to Be the Everlasting Fire” is an album about everything that orbits around love without quite being it. Through ten tracks, UTU explores need, violence, desire, and transformation – all the things that “might look like love” without actually being it.

For fans of adventurous indie pop that values both artistic ambition and emotional honesty, this album is essential listening. It’s a reminder that sometimes the truest statements about love come from examining its absence, its imposters, and its aftermath.

As winter approaches and darker emotions feel seasonally appropriate, “Love Collection” arrives as a perfect companion for shorter days and longer nights. It’s an album that reminds us that there’s beauty even in love’s darker aspects, and that sometimes the most honest love songs are the ones that question love itself.