Review Summary: today I saw a temple built in the time it took to swallow all this guilt
It's not hard to see why Dan Andriano thumbed these songs for a solo release instead of handing them over to Alkaline Trio for consideration. Matt Skiba, never the most adaptable guitarist in the business, could never have covered all the bases required by the reasonably diverse album (and would have undeservedly regulated nine of the songs to b-side hell like most of Andriano's post-
Good Mourning cuts, a fate worse than death). Andriano instead recruited the skills of Mike Huguenor on guitars, Kevin Higuchi on drums and Bomb the Music Industry! puppet master Jeff Rosenstock on production. Huguenor especially does a commendable job on the frets, sliding easily from the desert rock fuzz of "Snake Bites" to the squeaky-clean pop-punk bounce of "Enemies" and "Lowrider" to the lonely blues run on "Don't Have a Thing".
It can't be overlooked just how much Andriano has grown as a singer from that shaky-voiced kid of
Goddamnit. For an easy reference, compare that album's rock-bottom ballad "Enjoy Your Day" to its equivalent on
Party Adjacent, "Plain Old Whiskey". Both have a stark vocal from Andriano paired with a simple acoustic guitar strum; both tell of nights of the soul so black it seems the sun will never come out again. Yet while the kid in 1998 is embarrassingly (and to the listener, powerfully) raw and unsophisticated, barely able to hold a note let alone sing in key, the man in 2016 is a different beast entirely. Still heartfelt and brutally honest, continuing to write lyrics that put any of his contemporaries to shame, but with a confidence and range that has been years in the making.
But right alongside that vocal growth is his progression as a songwriter too. Part of this album's appeal is, especially compared to Alkaline Trio's usual fare, how fucking
fun it all is. Even with the usual self-deprecating, 3am-thoughts lyrics doing their run,
Party Adjacent is packed to the brim with energy, humour and vitality. Just see the fist-pumping choruses of "Lowrider" and "Fire Pit", the shoegazey hum in "Snake Bites", the heart-rending explosion at the end of "Pretty Teeth" following its unbelievably touching lullaby beginning. Some of this is undoubtedly the influence of Jeff Rosenstock on the boards, but mostly it just shows a man twenty years deep into his career with a voracious hunger for expansion and innovation.
If I had any doubts about this album, it was that the addition of a full band and the energy they bring might drown out the unbelievably fucking genuine heart of
Hurricane Season; and, for the first few listens, that's exactly what I thought had happened. But it's hard not to feel, when listening to a song like "Don't Have a Thing", that the spirit of that album has been kept very much alive: just captured, fed through a guitar amplifier and given a hefty dose of rock-n-roll charm to make its way into the world. If
Hurricane Season – an album which, tangentially, means more to me than maybe any other album I've heard in my life – was the stripping away of everything superfluous to show that Daniel Andriano can stand on his own terms, then
Party Adjacent is the beginning of a process to see what new things can be added into all that empty, inviting space. And that's the most exciting thing in the world.
