Review Summary: Diverse yet consistent, Horizons/East marks a confident return to form for the Californian rockers.
A crisis of faith is no small thing. Religious or no, we’ve all endured challenges, in one form or another, to our sense of selves, to how we understand the world. Those moments where chaos displaces stability. Where fear displaces comfort. Where self-loathing displaces creativity. Where despair displaces hope. In this space, resentment and nostalgia can offer some form of temporary solace and refuge. With time and resilience, however, those fortunate enough to push forward can discover the immense possibility that lay on the other end of an abyss. The kind of possibility that lights a fire, illuminating paths previously unseen. In this space, the giddy excitement of rebirth moves us to explore and take joy in the new and the unknown.
Broadly speaking, this has been the journey of Thrice since their post-”Major/Minor” hiatus. Indeed, “To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere” offered a nostalgic reinterpretation of previous, and superior, material from their catalogue. “Palms” took a further step backward, a combination of toothlessness and desperation that left the band feeling like a shell of its former self. “Horizons/East” has the band emerging from the other side: while far from perfect, the album bursts with confidence, excitement, and an exploratory fervor. But what does this mean in practice?
Three elements shine through in this album: sonic diversity, a feeling of “controlled chaos,” and hit-or-miss songwriting choices. With respect to the first, “Horizons/East” is Thrice’s most sonically diverse album to date, discounting the Alchemy Index. While there’s a few songs that hew to the band’s post-hardcore roots (“Scavengers,” “Summer Set Fire to the Rain”), tracks here boast elements of punk (“Buried in the Sun”), jazz (“Northern Lights,” “Dandelion Wine”), prog (“The Color of the Sky,” bridge in “The Dreamer”), hip-hop (verses in “The Dreamer”) and… jungle? (“The Color of the Sky”). Songs range wildly in tone and tempo, from the frenetic “The Color of the Sky” to the slow-burn “Still Life,” and everything in between. And, as a far cry from their guitar-rock roots, the band makes heavy and effective use of electronics, piano, varied percussion, and non-Dustin vocalists throughout the album.
Despite this diversity in sound, the album is still a cohesive listen, thanks in large part to career-best bass work from Eddie Breckenridge. Seriously, Eddie is an absolute MONSTER on this album. And, fortunately, the band wisely keeps the bass front and center in the mix. As some non-exhaustive examples, he rips the fretboard to shreds in “The Color of the Sky,” lays down smooth, jazzy grooves in “Northern Lights” and “Dandelion Wine,” sets down an absolutely irresistible, swaggering groove in “Buried in the Sun,” gives us less-is-more melodic perfection in “Robot Soft Exorcism,” and does his best to turn lead single “Scavengers” from a flat snoozer into a nasty, swaggering rocker. On bass, this album is the sequel to “Just Breathe” that I didn’t realize that I needed: virtuosic but restrained where necessary, Eddie sets down a blueprint for rock-bass perfection. Kudos to you, sir.
Now, back to the album as a whole. With respect to the latter two songwriting elements, Horizons/East--in many ways a sequel to the Air EP--juxtaposes chaotic elements with calm or steady ones. “The Color of the Sky” is a perfect introduction to this theme: the song boasts a hectic, frenetic rhythm, with ferocious percussion, bass, and electronics held together by a smooth, emotional delivery from Dustin on vocals. The song gives me major Kid A - “The National Anthem” vibes, but with the BPM cranked up to absurd levels. The too-short bridge in “The Dreamer” pulls off a similar trick. “Unitive/East,” a spiritual sequel to “Silver Wings,” takes this chaotic element to a new extreme with fast-paced, dissonant piano fighting against overlaid vocals. These components, combined with Thrice’s penchant for using unconventional time signatures, keep the listener on his/her toes throughout the record.
Amidst this chaos and experimentation, there are some hits and misses. With respect to misses, some are risks that don’t quite pay off. “The Dreamer” doesn’t find a way to jell in its sampling of hip-hop, mainstream rock, and post-hardcore. “Still Life” doesn’t quite stick the landing in its slow-burn approach, as the song employs an atmospheric, slow-burn approach that builds toward a climax that never really comes. Where these songs are failed experiments, “Scavengers” fails for the opposite reason: apart from some leavening from Eddie, the song is flat and doesn’t develop meaningfully across its five-minute runtime. It would fit comfortably on “To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere”: competent but unchallenging mainstream rock with some post-hardcore flavor.
As a whole, though, the album boasts more hits than misses. "Buried in the Sun" is a politically charged, absurdly catchy slice of punk rock with balls-out swagger. “Northern Lights” is a smooth, jazzy track with a fun rhythm and some delicious chord changes. The back half of “Summer Set Fire to the Rain” is as close as the band has ever gotten to replicating the emotional intensity of “Daedalus.” “Dandelion Wine,” a callback to “Circles,” borrows that song’s smooth guitars and jazz-fused rhythm, but ratchets up in intensity, eventually crashing into the heaviest passage in the album. And, “Robot Soft Exorcism” shows, once again, that Thrice will never fail us when it goes all-in on Radiohead influences (see also: “The Window” and “Blood on Blood”). The song’s tone, unconventional structure, and head-bouncing groove exude that off-kilter immersion that Radiohead has mastered over the last three decades. And, as a bonus, Teppei Teranishi shares Johnny Greenwood’s knack for adding texture and tension to a band’s groove through lead guitar work: Teppei’s slithering, building guitar enters along with shakers at the minute mark and carries the listener through a strange, delightful journey on the band’s standout single.
Horizons/East finds Thrice at its most confident, optimistic, and experimental. With any experiment, however, comes the occasional failure, and there are a few misses here. And, more broadly, the album never quite reaches the ecstatic highs of Thrice’s material off of “Vheissu” or “The Artist and the Ambulance.” Still, this album is far and away the band’s best work in the last decade, and makes clear that Thrice has plenty of enthusiasm and ideas left in the tank.
Standouts:
Robot Soft Exorcism
The Color of the Sky
Buried in the Sun
Northern Lights
