Note 8: Love Lost by The Temper Trap

The Temper Trap is an Australian indie rock band that formed in 2005. The lead singer, Dougy Mandagi was born in Indonesia, and some of his rich influences from singing in church choirs and listening to his dad play guitar are integrated into the band's sound. As a collective, the band's vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and other instrumental creations produce this unique transcending sound found nowhere else but in The Temper Trap. Love Lost is one of those transcending pieces.

Beginning with a classy keyboard progression, the song is accompanied by the uniform sound of clapping hands. The singer sings “our love was lost, but now we've found it”. Dougy’s voice that so much resembles the Gibb brother's vocals (BeeGees), add to the song's spiritual and emotionally uplifting quality. With just that first line, those four words illustrate an obvious circumstance in which someone (presumably him) and someone else had once lost their love. He sings with so much passion and raw emotion with the proceeding lines of “our love was lost and hope was gone.” Although those lines are very simple, the way Dougy sings those words illustrates this running image of the situation. Further ahead into the song, the words “and if you flash your heart, I won't deny it” suggests the willingness of the lover to take up this salvaged love once again. He then declares that he “won't deny it”, this sacred love, and this other person's heart. And after that, he says “I promise, I promise.” If the words were sung by any other artist, the ingenuity and power of the lines would be lost.

Encroaching upon the situation, it seems that the love and the pleading person are trying to cross into the once-known barriers of this relationship. He sings “your walls are up too cold to touch it, your walls are up too high to climb”, meaning that this other person is not comfortable opening up his/her heart to this person yet. Either too much damage has been done in the past, or the idea of re-opening this love is frightening and risky. But Dougy then pleads with the comforting lines of “I know it's hard but I can still hear it beating.” He tells this person that he understands the difficulty of all of this, but he also knows that this person's heart is still “beating” with all the love in the world, and that he/she has that recognizable thump (heart beats) rhythm that he knows all too well. He then promises again to not “mistreat it”, or take advantage of this person's heart.

In the end, he acknowledges that their love “was lost in the rubble” of all the things this person has “been dreaming of”, meaning that their first run was disappointing and perhaps even disastrous. Nevertheless, he begs this person to “keep [him] in mind” when he/she is ready, because he is “here to take [him/her] every time.” Those ending lines followed by the usual refrain illustrate the devotion and gratitude of this lover.