Review Summary: Try hard not to care.
As mentioned in my review of Floral Green, part of what I enjoy about Title Fight's musical output is how diverse it is. They've done pop-punk, post-hardcore, emo, and even touched on shoegaze. And that last one sticks out a lot from the other three genres. When they threw in a bit of shoegaze influence on Floral Green, it produced the best track on the album, 'Head in the Ceiling Fan'. But the key word there is "influence"; the instrumentals and vocal mixing were still very much emo/punk. However, on their latest effort Hyperview, they go way over-the-top with the shoegaze influence, resulting in an album that ultimately fails to pull the listener in emotionally.
The sound of this record seems to take the staple aspects of Title Fight's songwriting and simplify them, having them played with very little distortion and so much reverb that it removes all traces of the raw, organic power that made their earlier work so engaging to listen to. Opening track 'Murder Your Memory' immediately demonstrates this lack of energy well, with melodic structure that is by no means poor or amateurish, but is highly predictable. This is not helped by the excessively slow tempo of the track, which made me more aware of the bland songwriting on each repetition of the vocal line and guitar melody.
Speaking of vocals, now would be a good time to discuss why they fail on nearly every track fail, both emotionally and melodically. They feel basically like an afterthought, which is fine given that this is supposed to be shoegazey. However, there is just very little emotion in the vocal performances on any track, with the sole exception of 'Rose of Sharon'. This track features some of the better writing on the record, using pivot notes to throw a curveball at the listener, and featuring raw, rough vocals that I'd expect from their previous work. It's just a strange move to reverb the hell out of them and put them in the background along with one of the guitar parts on this record. For the rest of the vocal performances however, when they all sound so apathetic what reason is there for the listener to invest their own emotion in the music? Take the track 'Mrahc', for instance. It's actually a fun, simple The Smiths-esque number, and would almost sound at home being the themetune for a 90s sitcom about people who are just all really good friends. Except for the vocals, which sound like if The Smiths recorded in the bathroom and didn't give a damn.
Hyperview is not unbearable to listen to, but it's also not an engaging listen. It's one of the only times where I anticipated an album and upon hearing it for the first time I actually reached for something else to listen to. I'm still looking forward to seeing them on tour, and I respect them a whole lot for trying something new, but this album is probably one for fans of the band to write off.
