On their debut, this trio of fashionably dour West London lads crafts wildly overwrought goth-pop weepers with choruses that would make excellent Robert Smith High School yearbook inscriptions: “Let’s grow old together/And die at the same time”; “Farewell to the fairground/These rides aren’t working anymore”; “He catches raindrops from his window/It reminds him how we fall.” Diagnosis: blatant Interpol lust (frontman Harry McVeigh has a lovely, luxurious baritone indeed). Prescription: Succumb to your inherent cheesiness. Like Jason Segel’s Dracula puppet show in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, White Lies have yet to realize their tragedy works much better as comedy; consider ludicrous closer “The Price of Love,” in which McVeigh’s beloved is apparently kidnapped and held ransom for a million dollars: “I won $800,000 on a game show/But it’s not enough to win her back.” The thought of this guy hitting up Vanna for a vowel is kind of irresistible.

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