vote
6.5
- Bands:
TOUCHÈ LOVE - Duration: 00:31:55
- Available from: 11/10/2024
- Label:
-
Rise Records
Spotify not yet available
Four years after the release of “Lament”, Touché Amoré return to the scene with “Spiral in a Straight Line”, a new chapter produced once again by Ross Robinson. The Californian band, now a veteran of the post-hardcore scene, continues to navigate a proposal in which both the old screamo legacy and vague pop ambitions often converge, maintaining its trademark of short, immediate and at the same time charged songs of emotion. In short, the album fits into a stylistic continuity that the group has refined over the years, allowing its evolution to take place without sudden tears or changes in direction. After all, the band has now found its own sound for several years, where the guitars alternate stabs and a melancholic spleen, on which frontman Jeremy Bolm embroiders his rhymes, with an imprint that is now immediately recognizable, almost always halfway between shouted and talked.
The themes covered in the lyrics remain personal and intimate, with Bolm exploring, as usual, the deepest nuances of human vulnerability, from the pain of loss to the search for meaning in an ever-changing world. In his department, the frontman is always intense, but his limited vocal range and his stylistic approach, now predictable, sometimes risk being repetitive, despite the punctual desire to emotionally involve the listener. Here the parallel with a hardcore-punk Mark Kozelek emerges clearly: although obviously less verbose, Bolm has now found a narrative format that tends to repeat itself without ever deviating too much.
The collaborations present on the album, such as those with Julien Baker (Boygenius) and Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh), add a touch of novelty, but fail to significantly shake up the overall structure of the album. Baker's voice, delicate and differently expressive, offers an interesting contrast to Bolm's more scathing tone, however these moments are fleeting, and the work as a whole remains anchored to a certain predictability.
That said, more inspired songs like “Hal Ashby” and “Force of Habit” stand out for their ability to condense a vast range of emotions into a few minutes. They are tracks that perfectly represent the band's ability to blend rhythm and delicacy, for moments that will certainly prove worthy of being part of the setlists of future concerts.
Even and above all for songs like these, “Spiral in a Straight Line” cannot therefore be considered exactly a disappointing album, however here and there the spark that had made “Stage Four” a particularly valuable chapter in the band's career seems to be missing. If with “Lament” our band had then managed to reinvent themselves with Ross Robinson at the helm, but without distorting themselves, here they instead seem to have settled on safe ground, ending up in limbo an opaque and interlocutory thread, as if the concept of 'more of the same' was taken a little too literally.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM