I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

No band in indie rock today has a more badass name than this Austin quintet's. Say it with relish: I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. Makes you just wanna break up with somebody, doesn't it? The badassness doesn't stop at their name, either, like with that other noisy five-piece Austin act, . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. The handle is actually a pretty good indicator of frontman Christian Goyer's sad-poet worldview: He's bummed out by the futility of holding on to hope in this cruel world, yet he's resigned to the idea too. There are better indie-rock records today than Fear Is on Our Side, ILYBICD's debut full-length. (For example, either of Interpol's, to choose two Goyer might dig.) But Fear does exude the sort of icy, post-Joy Division melancholy that plenty of indie-rock kids find comforting in the absence of records by actual goths. One actual goth, Ministry's Paul Barker, produced the album, and he makes sure the band sounds like handsome dudes marooned on a lonely glacier. In "Last Ride Together," a wisp of synthesizer whips around Goyer's wan croon like a blast of arctic wind. ILYBICD has lots of moments like that.