By time you read this, Turnstile will have taken over the world.
The Baltimore hardcore band is receiving righteous laurels for their fourth studio album NEVER ENOUGH. They’ve released a full-length movie celebrating the songs, Hayley Williams says they’re ‘her Fugazi‘, and the band has collaborated with Converse to create a new kind of a 21st-century super footwear (okay, fine, it’s just another skate shoe, but still). If last summer belonged to Charli xcx, this summer certainly belongs to the hardcore quintet. NEVER ENOUGH offers just enough of what you’d expect, with a bit more of a nuanced, ambient approach to the band’s songwriting.
It’s a Foo Fighters moment, really. There was a point in the late ’90s where Dave Grohl and company were universally loved. They were five guys who coalesced to subconsciously grieve over the death of not just the spiritual mentor of the movement, but of the music itself. With direct links to The Germs, Nirvana, Scream, and Sunny Day Real Estate (screw it – throw in Alanis as well), the Foo Fighters were celebrating the glory of independent music, and the band was at the front of the parade. In fact, they may have been the only band in the parade. But, by the time One by One was released in 2002 and Grohl had put out the semi-acoustic abomination known as “Times Like These,” the world was a little tired of hearing the same old shit from the same old band.
But they were still at the top.
Rock and roll is different now. There are no bands that occupy the middle of that Venn diagram as effectively as Foo Fighters did back in the late ’90s and early naughts, but Turnstile is coming damn near close. Arguably, the band is sitting atop the heap of the dwindling relevance of rock bands that make money, and that’s certainly not by design. Even as the band’s sound has evolved from the infectious, primal hardcore of Non-Stop Feeling and Time & Space to the brilliantly celebratory genre-bending rock of GLOW ON, they’ve been reluctant messiahs for the cause, whatever that may be. And messiahs they are – their legendary live shows, where lines blur between audience and performer, are an example of communal living at its finest. If Turnstile can be proud of anything, it’s that they bring people together like very few bands on the planet do, and that’s high praise (no pun intended).
So perhaps NEVER ENOUGH acts as the first draft for the band’s quasi-religious text. The songs definitely exist in the dogma they perfected with GLOW ON, but they don’t sound as finely carved as that previous album’s contents. The band has mentioned that most of these songs weren’t finished pieces when they entered the studio, and many of the songs finish with a whimper rather than a bang. The whimpers, however, seem intentional, like a gentle plunge into the pool of ambient and experimental work. There are undeniable echoes of The Police‘s Ghost in the Machine album, another band that found themselves in the middle of the zeitgeist, struggling to match its newfound fame with the grit of its punk rock roots.
Take lead single and opening track, “NEVER ENOUGH”, for instance. It’s a bit underwhelming – a solid, midtempo, two-chord-tone poem. “NEVER ENOUGH” acts as a tone-setter for the album, ending in an atmospheric, ambient wash before heading towards the inevitable drive of second song “SOLE”, just to remind you that they haven’t left behind their hardcore Baltimore roots. It feels like a song they’ve written a hundred times before, but it also represents what Turnstile does best. Their version of hardcore occupies a sweet spot by which all other bands tend to circle around.
The addition of old-school synths brings a melodic heartbeat to “SOLE”. It’s a nice follow up to “NEVER ENOUGH” and keeps that song in that oddly reflective mood. “I CARE” brings the Police-like guitars to the forefront, shimmering and glossy, like a summer sun rising over the Atlantic ocean. It bounces around with hand-claps and lyrics that read like something out of a 16-year old’s journal of unpassed notes. Like many of the songs on the album, the tune falls apart more than ends, and it’s this interesting approach to songwriting that keeps NEVER ENOUGH from sounding like a rehash of GLOW ON.
Whether it’s those old-school synths, the horns that drive the melody on “DREAMING”, or the Aphex Twin-like glitches that permeate some of the percussion, part of the Turnstile template is to write a stock-in-trade hardcore riff, with a definitive verse and chorus, and add something unexpected to it. In most cases, this creative decision seems to work for the band. After all, this is what catapulted GLOW ON to the top of the alternative heap. The band continues this on NEVER ENOUGH, but in a less immediate way. These songs may lack the instantaneous appeal of what appeared on GLOW ON, but there is still evidence of these young Maryland kids having a helluva time.
Another part of Turnstile‘s DNA template is their ability to tread seriously close to the hot waters that “Ice Ice Baby” and “Blurred Lines” found themselves in, without actually burning up. On GLOW ON, “UNDERWATER BOI” was clearly inspired by Bad Brains‘ “Secret 77” from I Against I. On NEVER ENOUGH, that honor goes to second single “SEEIN’ STARS”, which may as well have been lifted from The Police‘s Zenyatta Mondatta, considering how close it sounds to “When The World Is Runnin’ Down, You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around“. The album is filled with songs that sound like somebody else, and this can be part of the joy of the listening experience.
Okay, fine, maybe by the time you read this Turnstile isn’t ruling the world. We will, unfortunately, have to leave that to the imperialist colonial masters of the 21st century. It is, however, most definitely a Turnstile summer. And while Bibi and Donald bomb sovereign countries and normalize genocide, xenophobia, and the establishment of the ethnostate, Turnstile will still invite you to join them on stage, pump your fists, scream at the top of your lungs, and jump into the void. Because in a Turnstile summer, there’s always someone there to soften the fall.
