Review Summary: Musically inclined and emotionally charged, Trophywife were a band that could be worth talking about in the future.
3 of 3 thought this review was well writtenMuch is made about bands that, and I can’t stress this enough,
seem to expand boundaries - genre classifications notwithstanding. Admittedly I’m most guilty; I glanced upon an eleven minute track length within Trophywife’s sophomore release and immediately lifted my expectations, and I’d argue that, to a degree, this is fair, for a band shouldn’t waste the listener’s time if they aren’t going to provide something worthwhile. But where things start going off track is when that band is heralded for being progressive, a label so diluted it’s meanings grown meager. Simply said,
Hold Onto Your Luck is a creation; producing songs that: begin-live-age-end. Call it what you want but there’s a natural aura breathing within this album that’s intuitive of a band that progresses.
Let’s begin with how comfortably evocative of emo Trophywife are. It’s their biggest asset and it often pushes songs past their delicate shells. “The Most Untraveled Path” is the most blatant example; a solemn strum lays the foundation before erupting into dissonance and crass screams that register unbridled emotion. It’s essentially the definition of an emo song and proves this point further by including unidentifiable voices pained beneath noisy instruments that lay a thick percussive wave. There’s a clear
Gospel-like influence here and tracks like “XI” and “Event Horizon” are indicative of this. Prominent riffs, that are often hazy at best, overcome lyrics that weave between rhythmic bursts.
The most impressive aspect of
Hold Onto Your Luck, however, is the distress strewn between the music and the vocals. A subtle dichotomy lay underneath the dissonance and the calm singing/frantic shouting. And goddamn does this work in Trophywife’s favor. “Foothills” establishes such a beautiful beginning before erupting with a gentle storm covering it’s turmoil that it threatens its own framework. This (oft) fray presented within the bands music builds a substantial self awareness throughout the album. These songs don’t just stop and start but move and evolve.”Pocket Knives” incorporates all of it’s post-rock tendencies naturally because it’s early emo brethren established footholds that lead to such a congenital progression - and so on so forth - because this is how
Hold Onto Your Luck acts.
Trophywife have thrown ideas at the wall with
Hold Onto Your Luck and this may in fact be its selling point. What didn’t work they still used because it’s despondent and that’s still a necessary attribute to growth; Something that should be shown to truly illuminate what’s progressed. Yeah, sure, a quarter of what
Hold Onto Your Luck boasts is original but its boastfulness of this fact is what makes the record so sincere. The easy personification of it makes this all the more understandable.
Hold Onto Your Luck subtracts the pretentions for,
literally, anything else, and it’s all the more authentic because of it creating something worth creating.
glad this finally has a review
