Ah, the supergroup – a term which carries with it both a tinge of curious excitement and a whiff of cynical disappointment. When members of well-known bands come together under a new name, we collectively root for them to gel with one another and find a creative spark that can potentially usurp the recordings we fell in love with in the first place. From the classic collectives like Blind Faith or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, to the millennial hard rock efforts of Audioslave or Velvet Revolver, and through to the modern likes of Boygenius and Better Lovers – the examples are numerous, but only a handful of them are genuinely fresh and enjoyable. So where does super-angsty supergroup L.S. Dunes fit into this paradigm?
Handily abbreviated to L.S.D. (intentionally, presumably), the group – consisting of Circa Survive‘s Anthony Green on vocals, My Chemical Romance‘s Frank Iero and Coheed and Cambria‘s Travis Stever on guitar, and Thursday‘s Tim Payne and Tucker Rule on bass and drums respectively – released their debut album Past Lives in 2022 to mostly positive reception from fans of the members’ main projects. It’s not hard to see why: Green’s unmistakable singing voice remains a favorite in this genre of music, while the rest of the band pulled from their creative wells to create a solid offering of emotional post-hardcore. It certainly wasn’t groundbreaking though, and there was reason to believe that perhaps it was a one-off instigated by the COVID lockdowns and nothing more than that (the fact that the members recorded their parts separately before adding Green as a vocalist later surely supports these doubts about the group’s longevity).
However, the first few moments of “Like Magick” signal that things are different this time around. Opening solely with Green’s simultaneously forlorn and commanding, hushed and tense tenor, the rest of the band breaks in after 45 seconds into a swaying waltz-like rhythm caked with melodic guitar lines. An unexpectedly low-key way of starting off the proceedings, the song takes another turn at the halfway mark – the drums begin a processional march and the arrangement builds in intensity to an unapologetically attitude-soaked guitar lead that somehow feels right at home.
“Like Magick” segues seamlessly into first single “Fatal Deluxe”, which is more typical of expectations for a group like this: a faster pace, screamed vocals, and twinkling guitar lines sit cozily next to falsetto crooning and intriguing lyrics about isolation: ‘It’s a toxic-themed anniversary/Where everybody goes as their own ghost/A viral funeral post’. One can hear the comradery present in this album that felt more muted on the last one; the sound of each band member organically building off of each other, the tension and release of each peak and valley. By the time the song fades out with Green softly imploring ‘How much is enough?’ underlined by ‘sure enough, showing up‘, it feels like the concept of defeat addressed in the lyrics is propped up by the singular vision of the quintet in crystal clear focus.
Iero and Stever in particular are on great form throughout the album. Their hypermelodic interplay on the title track is expressive and satisfying, and Green matches them with one of his most moving performances to date. “Machines” takes this approach and inverts it: beginning instead with the mid-paced bass and drums stomping of Payne (whose growling tone anchors the song to a sinister punk baseline) and Rule, the guitars float above as a counterpoint to the rhythm section, and Green opens up vocally and lyrically about how ‘Tonight, it can be anything you want’. His throat-shredding screams evince an authentic emotional (and maybe physical) pain that work in tandem with the instrumentals seamlessly.
The uptempo rager “You Deserve to be Haunted” and brooding, depressive “Paper Tigers” keep the back half of Violet moving, but it’s the closing “Forgiveness” that delivers the ultimate emotional gut-punch: a roiling, nervy verse gives way to the half-time chorus where Green’s strong vocal melody and harmonies effortlessly endear themselves. As the song progresses to its final climactic moments, Will Yip‘s production wraps around the band’s cacophony like a warm blanket of noise. This song’s – and by proxy, the album’s – abrupt ending may prove frustrating for some listeners, but it serves an underlying purpose: emphasizing the recurring lyrics of something being dead, gone, forgotten. It’s no wonder the final words on Violet are longing and nostalgic – ‘Fool me into trusting you again/The days our distance/Felt so small, it felt so thin/Don’t stop loving me the way you did back then‘ – in a universally heart-wrenching fashion.
Violet thusly stands as a testament to the ideal that when something goes away, the only choice we have is to rebuild. L.S. Dunes have proven that they are perfectly capable of standing strong on their own, and the potential they have to continue growing and innovating is that much clearer now. More L.S.D., please!
