Review Summary: Glassjaw don't hold back, and that's okay.
I’ll always be able to take solace in this album. If it’s late at night and I feel like my life is falling down around me, I’ll just put it on and drive to nowhere in particular, screaming along with Daryl like it’s the end of the world and my problems are the only ones that matter. It’s cathartic because it’s self-indulgent. Of course this moment or that moment are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Most things are. But sometimes I want to make my moments feel big, and when I do, all I want is to hear is Daryl screaming “This is what it’s like to be alone” so that that I can feel it too.
It doesn’t hurt that Glassjaw are fantastic musicians. When they want to be in your face you better believe that they know how to pull it off. They know aggression and they know how to write a chorus, “Siberian Kiss” being a prime example of how to do both effectively in one song. Not to mention Daryl Palumbo’s vocal performance is amazing. He sings like a man possessed, twisting his voice around to accommodate whatever loaded word he’s going to throw out next and screaming when clean vocals just don’t cut it anymore.
Intense songs like these have always been polarizing to me because of their visceral nature. Sometimes I hate this record. Sometimes I can’t stand the crude lyrics on “Lovebites and Razorlines” or the outright aggression on “Hurting and Shoving.” Sometimes I feel like it’s all just too much and I was wrong for ever empathizing with it. “Oh, I’ve matured past this,” I’ll think, “I don’t need to listen to glorified breakup music anymore. I can process and handle my emotions so much more effectively since the last time.” And then inevitably it will all come crashing back down and I’ll be in my car at three in the morning raging along with what I had just so readily dismissed.
See, when I’m at my lowest, I’m not thinking in politically correct terms or trying to temper how I feel. I’m much too busy being sorry for myself and hating the world for that. The beauty in Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence lies in the fact that it unabashedly is what it is. Why would Glassjaw try and sound pretty for you when they could just as easily tell you how they really feel? That’s what this album strives to and succeeds at capturing. It’s all the emotions you feel when your life’s going down and there’s no forecast for improvement. To deny its emotional impact would be to deny that dirty part deep inside of yourself that sometimes just wants to call that girl a whore. That doesn’t make it right, that just makes it what is. And sometimes that’s okay.
