Review Summary: The musical equivalent of an American tourist scouting for girls overseas.
The beauty of being a music enthusiast is that nobody is ever truly "right" or "wrong". Sadly, a lot of people choose to disagree with this mindset. There's something of a belief among music enthusiasts today under the age of 30 that anything remotely mainstream is pure garbage, and that the music industry is some form of Illuminati trying to control us with their new world order or whatever. I find this mindset to be a pretty damn sad and gross generalization, as someone under the age of 30. It's indeed hard to deny that most mainstream music today is processed and commercialized, but as long as someone, somewhere enjoys it, who are we to call them wrong? Perhaps the most hilariously misguided part of this mindset is that people secretly wish they were enjoying a more "obscure" artist (it's hilarious how much meaning that word has lost over time), like Deafheaven or maybe even Foals. Yet here we are in the year 2015, where whenever something even remotely "emotional" comes along, it's automatically regarded as one of the best things in the history of the world, and we're wrong to disagree. Adele's performance of her latest smash hit "Hello" to a private London TV studio audience in an event held by Graham Norton is no doubt going to strike a chord with a lot of people, and people will immediately start painting someone like Adele as the "last of a dying kind" or whatever, because her song deals with heartbreak and nostalgia. Yet it's because of this sort of hypocrisy why the elitist mindset of "Music industry = evil" is pretty fucking fragile. This standard has been set before by ballads like either version of "I Will Always Love You", Evanescence's "My Immortal" and hell, even an earlier Adele song, "Someone Like You". Anything can have "emotion" in it. No effort is even required.
This, my friends, is exactly why I've had a tremendous amount of trouble taking Twenty One Pilots, and in particular, their newest album
Blurryface seriously. While it is indeed impressive that they do what they do with two people, even just one person can do it. In fact, for those who are currently reading this review who have no idea who they are, take a second to go look at the artist's page. It's all in their bio. With sentences like "twenty one pilots is a band that does not want to be heard; they want to be listened to" and "we quickly find outjust how unhappywe are. but that's ok", it's almost enough to make you wonder if that's entirely what's driving their music. While that may not be a bad thing per se, it's inexcusible for a band to let it
be their music.
Blurryface is a long, painful 52 minutes of tolerable to sort of enjoyable ideas ruined by the band's sheer and utter pretentiousness. Sure, earlier stuff like "Car Radio" was proof enough of this (and downright cringeworthy to boot), but everything downright pretentious and cringe worthy about that track is taken to absurd extremes in their fourth (!!!) album. But it doesn't stop at their reliance on "emotion" as a crutch- imagine the whitest guy you could possibly think of- in his 20s and owns a fedora, believes in causes he has almost no first hand relation with, music tastes in direct correlation with Pitchfork- any or all or maybe even more of these. Imagine he decided to become a rapper. Imagine he decided to also, while he's at it, infuse some of the trendier indie pop sounds in, like fun. and any FueledByRamen band, and you pretty much have what listening to
Blurryface is like.
What's even more depressing than this is that there's actually several moments on the album where you think something awesome can come of it. What would really be cool is if the opening track, "Heavydirtysoul" lived up to the promise its admittedly infectious and catchy chorus creates. Tyler Joseph's soaring vocals ground the awesomely catchy line "Can you save my dirty heavy soul", and even the piano sprinkled during this part helps a bit too. Sadly, it's sandwiched between a cringe-worthy bridge and the whitest rap you've ever heard in your life that makes up the verses. We're only on the first track, mind you. Two tracks later, "Ride" starts off well and all goes swimmingly with its catchy reggae beat- until he does his most hilarious Rihanna impression that makes up the chorus. Furthermore, people with Tyler Joseph's type of voice (which sounds like Nate Ruess doing his best impression of the greasy fast food clerk on
The Simpsons) should never, under any circumstances sing the word "Ride" like he does on this album. Hell, I think an album full of bad tracks would be much better than an album full of tracks that would actually be decent if their good parts weren't so swallowed up by so much pretension and tryhard. Even the one actually good song on this album, which just so happens to be the big hit, "Tear in My Heart" isn't immune. It's catchy and tempo change near the middle is a welcome shake-up, but it's almost like they're trying to ruin it with awful lines like "
The songs on the radio are pretty good/But my taste in music is your face", perhaps the most offensively awful song lyric I've heard since the opening line of fun.'s "We Are Young". That's not to say that none of the tracks are bad. "Lane Boy" is like someone covering a Buck 65 song while drunk at open mic night. Even worse than that is the obligatory "White guy with an acoustic guitar" (thanks, Todd in the Shadows) song, or rather "white guy with a ukulele" song "The Judge", which is like Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" had drunken unprotected sex with Justin Bieber's "Under the Mistletoe", which is sad, as it has the best lyrics on the album- problem is, they deserve music more powerful than this.
And mind you, I haven't even gotten into the "emotion" part yet. What I just described in the previous paragraph is exactly why I have such a hard time taking 21P's mission statement seriously. They're all about creating "real emotional music", yet the music rarely ever sees past this mask. It's like an American tourist traveling abroad to get pussy. There's little purpose to it all, and little point to it all. Why go through all the trouble of making your lyrics the driving point of your mission statement when the music, and even worse, the songs themselves has little substance to back it up? There's no doubt that Tyler Joseph has a lot of passion, but it would be admirable if you didn't get the impression the whole time that you're in on some elabourate con. The whole time, it's honestly enough to make you wonder if Joseph is even serious with this all. Listening to him profoundly deliver lines like "
Cause if you stick around, I'll sing you pretty sounds/And we'll make money selling your hair" over upbeat music not unlike something off of Barenaked Ladies'
Gordon album, it's hard for me not to imagine Tyler with some sort of smug smirk on his face. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he's scamming us all.
If there is ever a time to use the word "pretentious", it's when describing
Blurryface. Sure, I could go on describing several avant-garde albums that have made me do a whole lifetime's worth of eye-rolling, but of any album that has made me done that, none has been as hilariously misguided as
Blurryface. It's as deep as a kiddie pool, and easily the worst thing about it is the fact that it does this all with a straight face. Maybe there is indeed something I'm missing, and maybe I'm "wrong" here or whatever. But the sheer presence of a musician "baring his soul" or whatever it is we're calling it nowadays doesn't equate to "good" music. We're at the point in time here where even the slightest voice crack in a vocal performance can be constituted as raw or something of the sort. And it's stuff like this why Twenty One Pilots are more dangerous than artists like Katy Perry or Britney Spears. Namely, the fact that Twenty One Pilots are so good at being able to hide the lack of substance.
