Review Summary: Try to take it all with me / but we forget finally.
After the emotional pyre that consumed 2014’s
LOSE, Cymbals Eat Guitar’s third album and Exhibit A in the argument that there’s still a (lonely) place for majestic, heart-on-your-sleeve indie rock, the band’s fans may be forgiven for thinking the group would dial it back. In many ways,
Pretty Years tends to favor the middle lane over the proggier aspects of the group’s past, and in producer John Congleton the band have someone who understands how to keep a sound sharp without sanding off too many of its rough edges. That is to say,
Pretty Years is an accessible record, more so than
LOSE’s nods to guitar-driven mid-90s indie and the group’s debt to artists like Modest Mouse and the Kinsella brothers. The E Street Street Band-after-a-case-of-Yeungling vibe of first single “Wish” comes as a bit of a shock – that saxophone! - but at its heart is a quintessential Cymbals Eat Guitars song. As a guitar record,
Pretty Years perhaps doesn’t reach the delirious heights of LOSE, but the melodies here are more consistently grounded in pop roots, however ripped and dusty they may appear. When that guitar angrily buzzes its way in to duel with the saxophone on “Wish,” it’s a reminder that Cymbals Eat Guitars still know where their bread is buttered – in those muscular riffs and the tortured singer they propel up and onwards.
Frontman Joseph D’Agostino has always been the self-destructive engine that gives Cymbals Eat Guitars’ their underdog character and vibrant, lived-in stories, and
Pretty Years reaffirms him as one of the most relentlessly self-critical lyricists around. “Wish,” easily the funkiest, most ostensibly jovial song here, finds D’Agostino mired in nostalgia and regret, the wish of the title one that can’t be granted: “You say the same blood runs through us/ me, though, I maintain that I’m different / years passed and I wish I could show you / and I wish that I told you.” Where
LOSE focused on one specific relationship – D’Agostino’s old childhood friend who had passed away –
Pretty Years is a more general retrospective of the singer’s adolescence and early 20s, from the elementary school reminiscing of “Mallwalking” right up to the self-doubt that’s never left in “Well,” where he wonders “think I need help, wanna be well / seven years, a million miles / crying ‘cause I’m sick again / is this how it is gonna end? / I’d stay in bed but we’ve got check at 5.” Yet in the brighter guitar tones of tracks like the raucous “4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)” and “Have A Heart,” which wouldn’t sound out of place on a new wave record, there’s a more optimistic sheen to the proceedings than the somewhat crushing memories on
LOSE. “Can’t believe the s
hit that we were promised really might exist,” D’Agostino sings on “Have A Heart,” a downright celebratory sentiment coming from someone prone to listing all the various ways he can deaden himself to his own self-loathing.
D’Agostino’s refusal to be anything less than intimate and incisive is as much a part of Cymbals Eat Guitars as those prominent guitar leads. While his vocals may remain an acquired taste – a ragged, throat-searing performance that occasionally obscures some of his finest lyrics – his lyrics here, in conjunction with the band’s more nuanced sound and adventurous production, make
Pretty Years their most complete record. D’Agostino remains wracked with uncertainty; in “Mallwalking,” he laments that his mother “knows that I’m an empty kid / she buys me stuff to fill me up / but I think I am bottomless,” but despite this he still finds solace in the most mundane of details: “Mama sing a song to me / when it’s time to put the dog to sleep / you are strong when we are weak / keep the name tags on your key ring.” D’Agostino rarely makes things easy, but when he cuts to the heart of the matter it feels all the more genuine, as when he hilariously tells a girlfriend to “cross the street to avoid a tweaker / don’t want you to get freaked out / that’s as much of a declaration of love as I’ll ever muster.” That song, “Close,” ends with a ringing mantra of “locked out we are free” on top of a locomotive groove that builds like a pressure cooker – even when D’Agostino feels on top of the world, there’s a nagging sense of inevitability, of being locked into something that can’t be changed. On “4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)” that feeling is summarized plainly: “My depression suddenly lifted,” he sings after narrating a comical day of drinking that turned dark. “All the adrenaline shocked my nervous system / swore I’d be present and thankful for every second / later the feeling faded / I couldn’t help it.”
You’d be hard pressed to find a more telling and relatable shorthand of D’Agostino’s take on life, but closer “Shrine” finds hope in even that somewhat nihilist (realistic?) perspective. Alongside an impressive display of restraint by the band that slow burns its way into a sunburst of white noise, D’Agostino finds something approaching acceptance in surrender: “Where will it all go when I die? / I’ll never know while I’m alive.” The distortion that eventually swallows up his voice and every other sound isn’t exactly a subtle metaphor, but it’s appropriate for a band that has grown accustomed to making grand gestures feel routine and, more importantly, earned. It’s a testament not only to
Pretty Years as one of 2016’s best albums but also to Cymbals Eat Guitars as one of the most compelling young bands performing today.
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