The cover art for Con Dolore's This Sad Movie album is a photo series showing a boy wooing
a sad-looking girl, trying to win her back perhaps, and the girl spurring his advances. These two
states of being -- wooing and crying -- are at the heart of This Sad Movie. At one side of
the album is a sentiment like "All I know is how I felt when I first laid eyes on you". At the
other: "I feel lonesome, I feel tired, I feel broken, I feel wired". In between are years of untold
stories about people, about the ways they entice each other, the ways they bless each other, and
the ways they break each other's hearts.
Con Dolore play dream-pop, music that floats around in a light, spellbinding way. But their
approach is also rootsy and earthbound. That duality is fitting for an album that lyrically is focused
on both starry-eyed infatuation and the darker reality of sadness. The group heavily uses
percussion and synth, and has both male and female vocalists, Kristy Moss and Ed Ballinger (though Moss's
vocals dominate the album). These are two more sonic balances that highlight that bridge between
the ethereal and the gritty.
The songs here are melodic pop tunes, yet they swirl around in various dreamy ways. They'll
occasionally break into a dance ("All Our Favorite Cats") or a haunting ballad ("The Happy Girl"). They
also have quite a dramatic side. Any band that titles an album This Sad Movie and has what
is essentially a short film displayed on its album jacket obviously has
an interest in cinema or theatre, and Con Dolore cast their music in that light as well. Moss's
voice tends toward the operatic at times, and the music always pushes the vocals towards emotional
heights that hold little back.
If the group intended This Sad Movie as an album-length audio movie, or as an album with a
story to it, at least, I'm not sure if that tale gets told clearly. Then again, the album-jacket
photo-story also ends ambiguously (is his escorting her to the taxi a sign of his giving up or a
sign of success?), so perhaps clarity isn't the point here. What This Sad
Movie does well is get across the moods of sadness and hope. The most blissful song is the
melancholy closer, the title song. "This sad movie's over and done", the lyrics go, but still, "I
can't let go". Now the storyteller's sad that the sad story has come to a resolution. Sadness is
catching, the song hints. And the music is there to support the staying power of sadness, as the song
slowly unfolds a mood of quiet resignation -- a giving in to the state of being sad -- and then
explodes with a larger, more sweeping sound as the singer confesses that the sadness is impossible
to escape, that it's "always inside".
— 29 May 2002
