Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a daily(ish) music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives.
Sorry for the temporary absence, but I'm back with a good one. I think I'm also aiming to be a little less ambitious with the schedule, and I want to keep up quality standards that I've set, so expect a review roughly every other day. Anyway, to the review:
TTNG - Disappointment Island (Sargent House, 2016)
Genre: Indie Rock
Style: Math Rock, Emo
TTNG (formerly known as This Town Needs Guns) was, at one point, my absolute favorite band. After discovering them early in high school, their album Animals - with its idiosyncratic guitar style, and powerful vocal melodies, built around plain good songwriting - became my most listened album of all time (and very likely still is). Their subtle rhythmic intricacies were like nothing else, and when their third album was announced I was fairly excited, even as I had grown away from the band to some degree. As it turned out, that album - 13.0.0.0.0 - would end up being released at a time when my musical interests were shifting towards metal and heavy music. With their new smoother vocalist and numerous tracks that felt too novelty or unfocused, the album failed to catch my attention for any real amount of time, and drifted out of focus. I felt slightly sad, and resigned to the fact that arguably the most important band to me had lost that place.
When I first heard the singles for Disappointment Island, Coconut Crab and A Chase of Sorts, I was apathetic. I hadn’t cared much for the bands previous album, and these tracks didn’t feel much better. Last week, my friend had offered to give me a ride to a show of theirs. I haven’t seen as many concerts as I’d like this summer, and only having to pay for a concert ticket (as opposed to the train fare I usually pay when going to NYC shows) made it very convenient, so I decided to go. In the car, we both realized that their new album had already been released, and put on the Bandcamp stream. I found it catching my ear a lot, and after having fond memories and remembering a surprising amount of old lyrics at the show, I knew I had to delve into this new album and review it.
As it turns out, reading the lyrics and putting the singles in the greater context of the album was crucial. Part of what made me love their self-titled album and Animals so much was the consistency that 13.0.0.0.0 lacked, and on hearing Disappointment Island as a whole I was pleasantly surprised that they seemed to be returning to this consistency. The instrumental side of this album is more focused, and somewhat of a return to form from the mixed styles incorporated on the previous album. The unique and slightly esoteric harmonic sense that was part of the appeal of Animals is present here as well, in contrast to what I recall being much more “safe” harmonic choices on 13. Destroy the Tabernacle! even reminds me of some of the harmonic ideas of Animals as Leaders, of all bands - especially interesting because I remember thinking that some moments of that bands album The Joy of Motion recalled TTNG’s guitar style.
In production too, I got the sense that the band wanted to return guitar composition to the forefront of their style. The auxiliary instrumentation of 13 is gone, and in its place is the pared-down sound of a 3-piece band that doesn’t need augmentation to sound full. The guitar is mixed right up front with every note being clear, and Hank’s baritone guitar often sounds even more bass-like in timbre. Drum parts have generally been strong but not overly prominent, but on here they show a certain degree of virtuosity that could have been easy to miss in the past. It seems Hank has found his groove in this band, because the vocals have definitely started to mesh more with their overall sound. The composition of the guitar parts themselves have also moved closer to what I see as the bands most conscious influence, the Tim Kinsella midwest emo band Owls. While twinkly, note heavy compositions have always been their forté, the guitar playing here incorporates more of the strumming in the sort of loose flamenco style that Owls’ Victor Villareal utilizes, such as on Sponkulus Nodge and Whatever, Whenever.
The point where this album resonated most however, was slightly unexpected: lyrics. I got into this band as budding guitarist and ended up learning a lot of their songs, and while I did enjoy their lyrics, I didn’t find anything to relate to too deeply in them. For the purpose of this review I read through them while listening, and found myself identifying with the themes of nearly every song. TTNG have always had that a little of that sense of self-aware indie rock distance, but Disappointment Island leans more in this direction than their first two albums, likely a product of their current vocalist. Lyrics can vacillate between plain-spoken mundane thought, and the self-aware impulse to poeticize ones experiences. Wit is an undercurrent in their music as well, and opening track Coconut Crab is meta in more ways than one. Paired with the stylistic reform, the title strikes me as a reference to the arbitrary titles of Animals, and thematically the track revolves around struggling to write song lyrics, through which it criticizes perfectionism in favor of just making something good. A Chase of Sorts continues with the challenges of artistic creation, this time dealing with authenticity of expression in art and self-commodifying.
What I wasn’t expecting was the real thematic darkness and weight here of songs like Consoling Ghosts and In Praise of Idleness, songs that deal with the suicide of a love and struggling to recover from ones own suicide attempt, respectively. The latter has so much to unpack, and a lot to think about; that there are four question marks in the lyrics should tell you as much. There’s also a lot of expression of helplessness in the face of things bigger than yourself. There’s No ‘I’ in Time espouses a certain grim optimism that I can very much relate to: we all die so why worry about it? In Sponkulus Nodge, the band questions human nature in the face of indifferent massacre on a structural level. Perhaps my favorite track, both musically and lyrically, is Destroy the Tabernacle!, which deals with miscommunication and the subtle barriers inherent in language that often go unnoticed.
Disappointment Island caught me way off guard. I didn’t have high expectations (or really any expectations) for this album after so many years of not being excited about this band, but everything here is a sign that TTNG has matured as a band. They’ve moved from the mid-20’s angst (which is fine, don’t get me wrong) of Animals to some very genuinely deep, adult themes. It took two albums, but Henry finally seems adjusted to the band. After exploring a variety of sounds on 13.0.0.0.0 to mixed results, they appear to have finally found a groove. I expect good things from them in the future once again, but for now this album is going to be on heavy rotation.
To buy or stream Disappointment Island, head over to TTNG's Bandcamp!
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