Review Summary: I like nice rock too.
Teenage Wrist are cut from the same cloth of bands highly influenced by the apathetic flannel trailblazers of the nineties alongside Narrow Head, Soul Blind, Superheaven – it’s all about the raw riffs, moody melodies, and cranked amps. The duo, comprised of front man Marshall Gallagher on guitar, bass, and lead vocals and Anthony Salazar on drums, percussion, and background vocals, opt to branch out their trademark hard rock fully established on last album,
Earth Is A Black Hole, into previously unexplored sonic territories with rather impressive results on
Still Love.
“Sunshine” drops in with a undeniably
fun riff that is a little edgy, yet still catchy before rising into a positively glowing chorus with Gallagher crooning, “
Feel a little sunshine/In spite of your past lives/And if it feels right/Give a little of what you got away”. 311’s SA Martinez guests on the subsequent “Dark Sky”. Despite the title, the song features another bright chorus - this one a little heftier - and verses that showcase the best of both vocal styles from Martinez in the form of an urgent rap and smooth, airy singing. The guest appearances continue into the soaring title track as Softcult’s Mercedes Arn-Horn and Phoenix Arn-Horn intertwine their tender, yet powerful voices with Gallagher’s throughout the song. All three voices weave around each other effortlessly, culminating in the Arn-Horns belting over the top of Gallagher while he all but mumbles the most arresting lyrical passage of the album:
Serpents in a row all devouring our tails
We are hungry for injustice and we’re loading up the scales
We signal revolution but we only know the motions
Will our children kill for water, will they ever see the ocean
When the oil runs out we’ll go deeper down the well
Until we kill the children buried deep within ourselves
But at the end of all the burning we’ll be crying for our mothers
If we’d learned to love ourselves maybe we could have loved each other
“Cold Case” and “Cigarette Two Step” – featuring David Marion of Fear Before the March of Flames – unite to explore the heavier side of Teenage Wrist’s songwriting. Deceptively unassuming at first, “Cold Case” flares from mere smoldering embers to a searing inferno of emotion over the course of the song’s near four-minute runtime as Gallagher shreds his throat, screaming “
You’ll never be free” until everything comes to a sudden stop. “Cigarette Two Step” prowls around, biding time before ultimately self-destructing with Gallagher and Marion howling over each other about returning back to the earth. While Teenage Wrist has flirted with a more aggressive sound in the past – listen to “High Again” off
Earth Is A Black Hole – “Cold Case” and “Cigarette Two Step” successfully pushes the duo a little further into that field and adds a satisfying edge to the band’s songwriting moving forward.
Speaking of satisfying, album highlight “Sprawled” is arguably the finest song Teenage Wrist has written to date. Unfolding with a crisp, thick bassline and an almost swing guitar strumming rhythm, “Sprawled” ebbs and flows with an oddly romantic, yet melancholic aura hanging over the proceedings. About two thirds of the way through, things take a special turn as the song drops out to welcome the soulful saxophone of Robert Pera. The track builds and builds with tension before exploding with huge guitar chords and Pera’s saxophone sounding triumphantly over the top – a absolutely captivating ending to a piece destined to leave listeners mesmerized by the wild splendor of it all. Simply put, “Sprawled” is one of those obvious moments of risky musical experimentation bands roll the dice on sometimes and here, that dice roll results in an undisputable jackpot for Teenage Wrist.
While most of the experimentation lands well on
Still Love, not everything is sunshine and rainbows. “Diorama” drifts along almost aimlessly, although the subdued songwriting approach and inclusion of cello underneath should be applauded. Album closer, “Paloma a.k.a. Ketamine”, comes across a little too unrefined and barebones, robbing the song of a better impact if fully fleshed out. Finally, as a self-proclaimed stickler for song sequencing, a couple stretches of songs on
Still Love are ordered in a maddening way. For example, the middle half of the album, consisting of “Digital Self”, “Something Good”, “Wax Poetic”, and “Diorama”, completely derails the momentum of the album off the back of the title track. While all four of these tracks are quality tunes in their own right, they are all rather reserved and mid-tempo. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Making it all the more confounding, the two angriest songs in the aforementioned “Cold Case” and “Cigarette Two Step” are coupled up to “Humbug” – which is Teenage Wrist hard rock at its purest, featuring former bandmate Kamtin Mohager of Heavenward - next. If the three livelier later tracks were alternated with the earlier four, the album would have played through with a more consistent energy with carefully allocated dips into softer, more experimental approaches instead of inadvertently leading listeners to be mired in the slower stuff halfway through the tracklist before diving headfirst into the more intense tracks immediately afterward.
While not every experiment taken has paid off for the duo, there are many more highs than lows to be experienced on
Still Love and though not perfect, these twelve songs capture a band continuing to explore and refine their sound with increasingly impressive results. Just one additional listen to “Sprawled” will demonstrate just how far this duo’s already laudable songwriting has come. Teenage Wrist’s third full length album,
Still Love is chock full of those raw riffs and moody melodies that fans of hard rock, grunge, and shoegaze crave, yet filled with a curiosity to meander outside the restrictions of those genres as well. Explore with them.
