Christine and the Queens’ forthcoming album, PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE, is a body of work heavily inspired by Tony Kushner’s seminal work, Angels In America. The play, set in a desolate 90’s New York amidst the AIDS pandemic, flutters between a greyscale urban reality and fuchsia tinged fantasia. The latest single Chris has shared from the project, Tears can be soft, feels set in the former.
A sticky and brooding trip-hop ballad, Tears can be so soft’s most direct point of reference is Massive Attack, and owes much to the group’s similarly titled Tears. There’s touches of Michael Jackson, who has been an obvious inspiration for Chris, in the song’s Stranger In Moscow like tempo and tone, backed by a black and white music video featuring Chris wandering the streets of an empty city in a black trench coat. But for all its glaringly obvious influences, Tears can be so soft still manages to avoid feeling entirely derivative. Instead, it invites a sonic palette that feels like Chris’ most distinct departure to date, breathing something new into the scope of his discography. The cinematic factor of the track is big, with swelling strings and eerie melodic modulations that gives the whole thing a grandiose sense of drama. It’s a gorgeously realised intermeshing of Chris’ signature romanticism with a more mercurial edge, and possibly PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE’s strongest single thus far.
See the music video for Tears can be so soft below
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