Oh how I want to love you
Oh how I love to want you
Oh how I love to hate you
Oh how I hate to love you
A persuasive EBM bassline can make almost any terrible proposition sound like it’s worth considering. Charm School’s Desolation makes the most of that weakness, setting a romance of taunts, submission, and calculated cruelty to a groove with suspiciously good manners. The invitation is easy to accept; the lyrics give you every reason to reconsider.
The single pairs the Louisville-rooted, Los Angeles-based project with Matia Simovich of INHALT, who wrote the music, while Andrew Sellers, aka Andrew Charm, supplied the vocals and lyrics. It also serves as the lead single from a forthcoming EP that will include the late Steve Albini’s mix of Simulacra, Charm School’s first single.
Simovich opens proceedings with a funky synth bassline, setting old-school synth stabs against drums intent on keeping the floor occupied. Metallic synth accents add a peculiar mechanical funk, their hard surfaces catching against the low end’s easy movement. There’s an EBM discipline to the arrangement and an Italo appetite for pleasure, with a trace of darkwave unease making itself comfortable between the two. Every sharp edge has something supple moving around it.
Sellers attacks the vocal with a Stooges-era Iggy Pop drawl, mixed with the timbre and cadence of Lou Reed at his most forceful onstage. The compressed vocal sits prominently in the mix, with reverb sending the words ricocheting as though they were bouncing off sheet steel or passing through the blades of an industrial fan. That peculiar treatment gives each phrase a cold metallic afterimage. As the vocal develops, a bubbling synth figure lifts the groove, lending a playful buoyancy to a song whose romantic prospects are deteriorating by the line.
The opening verse treats manipulation as a sales pitch, with a lover boasting of their dishonesty while angling to become the sole object of another person’s belief. By the second verse, that desire for control has tipped into a plea for surrender, even deception, as though being consumed by someone might offer its own peculiar relief. The roles seem to trade places, with domination and dependence feeding the same appetite. Images of kneeling, worship, and bodily sacrifice push the devotion toward something frighteningly absolute.
The repeated title leaves that exchange with a bleak destination, while the closing permutations of wanting, loving, and hating keep rearranging the terms without resolving them. Each small change shifts the emotional balance. Pleasure survives in the music even as the words describe a relationship consuming itself, and the bassline keeps making its persuasive case for staying another few minutes.
The collaboration also extends a connection dating back to our 2023 coverage of Simulacra, which credited Simovich with drum programming and noted alternate mixes by both Simovich and Albini. The forthcoming EP brings Albini’s version into the release plans alongside this new material, linking Charm School’s first statement to their latest electronic excursion.
Listen to Desolation below and order the single here.
Sellers formed Charm School with longtime collaborators Matt Filip and Drew English, drawing on a Louisville upbringing steeped in Slint, Crain, and Rodan, alongside the catalogs of Touch & Go and Drag City. The disruptive instincts of PiL, Swell Maps, and The Fall sit beside an affection for Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses. Their debut EP, Finite Jest, appeared in July 2023, followed by the broader musical reach and acerbic satire of January 2025’s Debt Forever. This February’s Schadenfreude Ploy continued their examination of manipulation, tech wealth, and artificial intelligence. On Desolation, that interest in power finds an intimate setting, with two people apparently quite prepared to make each other miserable.
Charm School will join Dildox for dates in Louisville and Knoxville before returning to Los Angeles for Oblivion in October.
Live dates:
- October 1 — Louisville, KY — Camp Spaceman
- October 2 — Knoxville, TN — Pilot Light
- October 18 — Los Angeles, CA — Oblivion
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Follow INHALT: Los Angeles, CA
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