Love Your Dum and Mad begins with this insistent clanging; it's guitarist Simon McCabe hammering away on a zither, making some industrial-grade din-- the noise perfectly mimicing a train crossing signal. It's an anxious sound, the soundtrack of impatiently waiting, of staying clear of a powerful, inevitable force that could crush you. The jing-jing-jing of this lasts for the nearly four minutes of the album opener "Aching Bones", a dark droning concoction of martial drums, blown-out bass, and pricks of parlor piano. All is static until Nadine Shah arrives and unfurls her velvet voice, singing of a love that destroys-- and setting the tone for a dark record that does not relent.