Review Summary: Does anybody want me at all?
Adulthood is a bitch, right? Growing up is a myth. Too bad we discover this after countless failed attempts to grow up and become something we were told we ought to become. There are no grownups, just people with more and more stress over years. Millennials learned this the hard way, generation that got stuck being infantile right until they turn thirty. And then they’re getting crushed by reality, drugged out and stoned, with a weak memory of the future they’ve painted to themselves since childhood beginning to fade away. Yes, you got it right, Nearer My God is an existential crisis album. It's OK Computer for the millennials.
Foxing is a hard band to decipher, their mood swings, tongue in cheek narration, sonic ambiguity make it nearly impossible to pinpoint them as a thing, you know, what they are all about. They don’t want to be pigeonholed, it’s okay, but this makes them so unpredictable it hurts. Singles from their latest album were all over the place, after pretty consistent Dealer I was thinking that this album with equal probability might become their worst and best. Thank god it’s the latter. Actually, thanking god would be a misstep with these guys. I don’t know, thank drugs or something.
Ashing cigarettes on tombstones
Pin photographs on card boards
Unfollowing my dead friends
It’s just a small glimpse into the lyrical content you’ll get on Nearer My God. Yeah, it’s that dark. And it’s so real and relatable, like your shower thoughts or sleepless nights when you’re busy imagining the things you should have said. It’s so current that it makes me think that we all are still in 2015 and Conor Murphy is in 2020 right now. Because the things he says most times are the things no one dares to say: his words are naked, the delivery is extremely raw and dare I say perfect wrapped around the context and meta culture. But there is an undeniable beauty in all of it, of course it’s sad, but sadness is inevitable hence my prologue. It’s the acceptance of all this messed-up stuff Conor sings about that gets me, there is no resistance, there is no whining, it is what it is, it’s simple and complex at the same time, it’s modern life.
Nearer My God sounds like nothing else: it starts and ends not only like it’s two different albums, but in fact like it’s from two different bands. The first half is all dreamy and layered, relying heavily on the beat, and by the end of the record we hear something entirely different, more guitar-driven songs with traditional chord progressions and structures. Penultimate Five Cups could be easily a Bon Iver song, tracks like Gameshark and Heartbeats would easily fit on a Radiohead album, and then suddenly there is a Band of Horses likeness and The Cure, and The 1975, and Tame Impala. At this point I’ve stopped trying to cross-reference Foxing, it’s pointless, they are in the league of their own.
All being said, this album is a masterpiece, and a hell of a ride that I’m willing to take again and again. It gives the answers to the questions I didn’t even know I had. It will save lives, it will ruin lives, people will love it and hate it, my only hope is that no one will be indifferent. If the right cards were dealt, Nearer My God will become this generation’s Disintegration or Loveless. But I don’t care, for me it already is.
