Review Summary: Hold onto your hope.
Hold Onto Your Luck is a meticulous and chaotic epic of diametrically opposing ideas. In this sense only certain influences seem to sprout forth in ways even -somewhat- obvious, that being Touche Amore-style melodramatic ciggie-lunged shouts (track examples, “XI”, “Pocket Knifes”.) and riffs/shreds that capture a middle ground between Gospel and the OG era of swancore (think
Doppelganger by The Fall of Troy). This and flourishes of other, uh,
somethings are recontextualized (Louis Armstrong vocals that cap off “Thieves” being a dominant example), strung together in a much more patient post-rock-esque fashion. This makes for an album as jubilant as it is melancholic, as deeply submerged in murk and fog as it is soaring above sun-soaked meadows and shimmering ocean tides.
That unbridled crescendoing chaos is aptly represented on “Event Horizon”, where absolutely visceral wails are matched with a smooth mesh of staccato chords and lush arpeggios, woven without fault due to how natural their progression seems to be, even when the whole concept of the track gives way to an unexpectedly feeble clean singing refrain.
Hold Onto Your Luck is most impressive in its ability to subvert expectation without sounding jarring or stuffy, which would almost assuredly plague many albums of such monolithic stature. It does help that within these moments of anxiety-inducing tension there are gentle refrains, such as the absolute dreamscape of azure rolling waves that both introduce and periodically interrupt songs like “Pocket Knives”. In this both darkness and light are shed, like the inescapable melancholy of a lover’s fallout and the tranquil thoughtful sit down by a scrawling stream that often follows. All of life's trials and tribulations and how close they seem to tail each other.
“A Title For A Body” continues this motif of dichotomy perhaps more well than
any particular track, with great torment (screams sharp enough to rend skin from bone) and great tranquility (guitar melodies as gentle as a litter of newborn pups) coexisting alongside each other in a way that while viciously haunting is also lovingly hypnotic. We then approach the -real- event horizon, all of these feelings condensed and expanded with such immense intensity that it feels like the goddamn heat death of the universe. “Rooting Out Your Skeletons” is more urgent and immediate than nearly every moment of this record, as if to eschew all notions of patience and structure for something that hodgepodges every iota of emotion into a single track (which contains within it, might I say, the sickest hi-hat drum beat in all of post hxc). Sure, there are dirty bassy dirges that introduced and are subsequently wrapped back into that offer an almost noir-esque introduction into and bridge between those moments of ***-me-that’s-intense turmoil, but even those are comparatively infrequent when compared to the 11 minute mammoths that are tracks like “Thief” and the previously mentioned “Pocket Knives”. In a way, the finality of this record feels like an intentional representation of how every life experience contains this tincture of beauty and pain, and it is the individual's perception of this that controls how these two opposing feelings are nurtured. In life’s most dismal miasmas, have hope and hold onto your luck.
