Friday, April 15th, 2016

Artist: All Human (facebook) (twitter) (bandcamp)
Track: “And So Peter Dances”

I should be less surprised that All Human’s sophomore release has consistently been one of my favorite releases of 2016. Though Teenagers, You Don’t Have to Die! is my first exposure to the brainchild of Adam Fisher (Fear Before, Orbs) and Brian Ferrara (Trophy Scars), I should know by now that anything Adam Fisher has a creative voice in is going to stick with me. The man has one of the cleverest pens in modern music and a gift for slinging words together in the kind of rhyme schemes that should be studied in academic English classes, after all. But he also has a knack for composing and arranging music that just resonates with the same off-beat his lyrics hit. Or maybe the music just has to revolve around that lyrical beat. It beats me, but the point is, it always works.

It’s hard to single out a track on Teenagers to highlight since it’s an album full of high points stitched together with impeccable flow. But if we’re going to start, let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

“And So Peter Dances” kicks off with a nice little spoken word bit about how much working sucks, which is particularly enjoyable whilst sitting in your cubicle. The music paints a dark and snowy street corner while Fisher’s lyrics complete the scene by adding in the lonely man freezing on that corner without even the thought of a family to comfort him. The melancholy of the track is undeniably pervasive, underscored with the brutally barren first chorus of “No home” and further beaten down by the constant questioning of mundane everyday life activities (“Did you make the bed?”, “Did you drink alone?”, “Did you make it to bed?”). The piano, atmospheric synths, and light touch of strings perfectly highlight and counterpoint the common human dilemma of the situation as it evolves, while a vibrant and surprisingly zestful reed melody builds throughout the final chorus and leads the track out.

The track (and, really, the whole album) is such a perfect representation of despair and bleak emotion that it’s hard not to relate to. Though Fisher’s penned laments, anxieties, and social fears might not exactly be filed under the “normal” category (“A Healthy Fear of Women” seems to deal with some sort of BDSM fantasy, for example), the quirk is part of what makes the album so unique and appealing, while the underlying emotion is what truly resonates.

If you like this track, I encourage you to check out the full album. But if you’re short on time, recommended tracks include: “A Healthy Fear of Women,” “Where’s My Upslope?”, “Even the Dogs Stare,” “Night Swimmer (Camp Ohio),” “Asleep on the Church Steps,” and “Rogue Bee.”

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