“…Rodrigo’s most experimental album to date, veering away from the rock-infused pop a la Alanis Morrissette and her 90s contemporaries, going down the rabbit hole of reverb-soaked clean guitar entries that conjure images of rainy nights, chainsmoking cigarettes, and a person falling apart at the seams.”
By the time we get to “I Built You A Tower (b)”, he’s exhausted. The line “I’m learning how to live without you” sums up everything that I Built You A Tower is supposed to be: a meditation on denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Grief can take the energy out of anyone; I Built You A Tower is Death Cab For Cutie processing grief and watching it sap the life out of Gibbard in full-on stereophonic sound.
But there is a fire burning under The Bobby Lees - you can hear it on every track of New Self. My first introduction to this album was back in March when I first heard the title track. It hasn’t left my playlist since; their power as a band hits you like a punch in the face.
An Eraser and a Maze, Modest Mouse’s eighth studio album and their first since the death of Green, is the band as they once were, what they are now, and what they strive to be in the future. Brock makes bold, quirky, vivacious indie rock, and An Eraser and a Maze is the continuation of that legacy.
While love and anxiety are pretty common topics in this subgenre of rock - call it “emo”, “post-hardcore”, “scene”, or whichever identifier you prefer - An Ending in Itself delivers these breakdown-driven mental explorations well.
On SOMA, Skrillex continues his genre reinvention, taking world sounds and blending them with the subwoofer-shattering bass drops he’s become known for. He’s more subdued this time around, but the heavy moments still make their presence known.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is an album about love - friendship love, romantic love, familial love, and all of the complicated emotions that range from it. Specifically, it is about what happens to love over time. Sometimes it grows fonder, sometimes it starts to fade. But how lucky it is that we are to have loved at all.
Turnstile makes me genuinely excited for the future of the genre. NEVER ENOUGH is a clear case that punk rock and hardcore can indeed evolve, retain their core elements, and still be interesting.
