White Lies' Fairy Tale

White Lies' story appears to be that of musical fairy tales. The young lads played their first live gig as White Lies a year ago to a slew of A&R reps eager to invest in the '80s-inpired synth-rock band with dark outfits and darker lyrics.

They subsequently signed with Fiction Records, the home of The Cure and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Fast forward and they've already toured Europe and North America, landed on the covers of numerous high-profile European music magazines and are getting ready for another year of universal touring and conquering.

But there's more to this glass slipper story than Prince Charming and a grand chariot. There was a lot of hard work and disappointment before that fame-making debut gig at Hoxton Square's Bar & Kitchen.

"It's really hard to kind of say what becoming a big deal overnight is," says drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown over the phone from Berlin, Germany in a soft British accent that makes him sound both articulate and wise beyond his young age. "We've actually been doing music together since we were 15 or 16.

"Although it seems to a lot of people like maybe a few months and suddenly we just arrived, it's actually been for us more like five or six years. It's all come together very quickly as White Lies, but before that we had years and years of struggles and trying to break it as different acts, and it never really happened for us. We finally got to a point where we wanted to let go of all that and not worry about what other people thought and make something more personal to ourselves.

"It just goes to show it was definitely the right decision for us to make. As soon as we felt like we were trying to write songs in a more personal and natural way, it seems to have captured people's imaginations a little bit."

The band were known as Fear Of Flying before they changed their moniker and sound. They were a more indie pop group that enjoyed some success in their native land and worked with producer Stephen Street (Blur, The Smiths). The trio grew up and grew tired of that type of music, so, after announcing their demise without a final show, they shut down their MySpace page and closed that chapter of their lives.

The hype about the darker White Lies began almost as quickly as Fear Of Flying crashed. Laced among the soothing synths, keyboards and 20-piece string orchestras were songs about funerals, death and murder. These topics cast a heavy shadow on what is actually a beautiful and passionate collection of songs that illuminate the astonishing amount of love and patience that White Lies put into their construction.

"Especially in the U.K. we've had a lot of people who have wanted to label us as this very gloomy, dark, depressing act, and really for us that is not how it is," says Lawrence-Brown. "If that's how we come across to other people, then fair enough, but for us the whole process is much more uplifting than that, I think.

"There's definitely some dark subject matter in the lyrics in some of the songs, but it just depends on the way you read into them.

"Songs like 'Death' on the surface sounds like it is going to be a bleak and depressing song, but is probably in terms of music one of our most uplifting tracks. The lyrics aren't depressing at all. They're talking about how it's actually OK to be afraid of things like dying and it's OK to be afraid of not knowing what's happening with your future and with your life. It's not necessarily quite as dark and gloomy as people have taken it, and it's nice that you've found slightly different meanings to the lyrics."

White Lies recently toured the U.S. and Canada following the March 17 North American release of To Lose My Life (or To Lose My Life And Lose My Love as it's sometimes called in extended form). They played a couple og gigs at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, followed by numerous American dates, a sold-out show in Toronto and a spot at this past weekend's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

This set up to be a big year for White Lies. Though it may be a challenge to prove they're more than a buzz band, they have the spirit, talent and backbone to plough through. I think it's safe to say their fairy tale isn't over yet.