Review Summary: melodramatic naivety.
Imagine walking into your local coffee shop. You see a girl working behind the counter with an undercut and blue streaks, as well as an XXX tattoo on her wrist. She gives you a swift glance and notices your style. The woman asks you, “so I’m assuming you’re into punk music based on your beat up denim jacket and long ass hair.’” You continue to instigate a conversation, and bring up that Touché Amoré is your favorite band. Upon telling the girl this, she seems overwhelmed with excitement, as she exclaims, “Oh my god, aren’t they like similar to La Dispute?? Such Small Hands and Andria are such good songs! The lyrics are soooo good, they remind me of Rupi Kaur. Have you ever read any of her works?” And if you would react anything close to how I did when I was confronted with this scenario, you would politely decline, take your tea, and walk away as far as you can from that coffee shop. The thing is, this is the stereotypical youthful La Dispute fan I’ve come across. Of course this isn’t every La Dispute fan, but I’ve certainly come across too many people fitting that description. These specific types of people are essentially the physical embodiment of every superficial and melodramatic quote on tumblr and this album is the quintessential work for such a person.
Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair is the epitome of melodramatic teenage heartbroken bullshit and its guilelessness is evident.
Now I really want to enjoy this release. Trust me, I really do. Both
Wildlife and
Rooms of the House are albums I play on repeat all the time for their incredible storytelling abilities with subtle and graceful instrumentation that flows and wires together so intricately that there is no reason for me to NOT love it. But there’s just so many negative aspects of
Somewhere at the Bottom that contradict the few positive aspects of it as an album experience. For example, the lead guitar lines from Chad Sterenberg provide such a refreshing, progressive, and almost jazzy take on modern post-hardcore. These wouldn’t be a nuisance whatsoever if the tones didn’t sound like they were lifted from a shitty Christian metalcore band of the same era and the mixing on the guitars didn’t sound like they were done by some random kid the band found in the back of their local Guitar Center. Same concept of contradiction with Jordan Dreyer’s songwriting/vocal delivery. Some of his most unique lyrics lie on here, especially on the latter half of the record. But the delivery he uses is just so much more youthful and whiney than later releases and the godawful mixing doesn’t help that whatsoever. Like as much as I truly want to enjoy songs like “Andria” I can’t help but feel like I’m listening to some kid from Hot Topic scream about how his ex girlfriend broke up with him over MySpace or Tumblr or something. The best moments on this record heavily rely on dynamic though and wind up being either the most quiet and subtle or the loudest and triumphant. The jazzy Off Minor inspired guitars of “Fall Down, Never Get Back Up Again” provide a clean and twinkly transition (albeit a tad rigid but I digress) and the climax to “Said The King To The River”, even for how edgy it can feel, is one of the most renowned and recognizable moments in post-hardcore and for obvious reason. But those moments are so few and far between on this record and they don’t outweigh the odd mediocrity of tracks like “The Castle Builders” or “Bury Your Flame” which sound like both weird math rock and southern rock pieces respectively that Jarrod Alonge would write as a parody or something. The album plays in a jumbling game of consistency with itself until it finally ends in one of the greatest pieces of post hardcore ever made in the album’s centerpiece. “The Last Lost Continent” boats a fairly improved vocal performance from Dreyer, incredible dynamics instrumentally, and one of the most triumphant gang-vocal performances in punk with a triumphant verse talking of marching forward as the last of their kind. The album then ends with a continuation of album opener “Such Small Hands” that nearly as melodramatic or whiney as said opener, but still is kind of inconsistent. So even for every “Last Lost Continent” and “Said The King To The River” the album has, it’s so outnumbered by the “Castle Builders” and “Andria” that the album has to offer.
As
Somewhere at the Bottom… stands, there are some phenomenal (and I would even go as far to say some classic) songs that this album has to offer. Otherwise it wouldn’t be as loved as it is. But I genuinely feel like the plentiful negative tracks/aspects that this album are so inconceivably overlooked by the positive and memorable moments this album has to offer. Memorable isn’t always a good thing. The intriguing jazz inspired leads on this album will always be outnumbered by the incredibly sub-par southern-metalcore inspired riffs/breakdowns and overbearing mixing job. The interesting storytelling of songs like “The Last Lost Continent” from Dreyer will always be outnumbered by, well, the rest of the album essentially. For what it’s worth, La Dispute did mature greatly and went forward to create one of the best post hardcore releases of the century so far with the infinitely improved
Wildlife but that doesn’t give
Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair a pass for its sporadic and horribly produced, melodramatic, and naive garbage.
