Jeremy Bolm is an oversharer. Throughout Touché Amoré's career, his lyrics externalized panic attacks and thought spirals, social anxiety and sadness, and almost inexpressible existential dread. “I'm hard on myself for being in a band this long and still writing these kinds of songs,” Bolm recently told die-hard legend Norman Brannon. Antimatter. “There's going to be some listener who says, 'Brother, how come you haven't made it yet?'”
The fear of stagnation is a valid concern. For nearly 20 years, Touché Amoré have mined a rich vein of melodic hardcore, marrying Bolm's verbal intimidation with outbursts of violence and sudden turns to beauty. As strong as the formula is, Touché has never been afraid to evolve. The release of the band in 2016, Stage Four, it represented a catharsis of Bolm's feelings after his mother's death, and owed much of its impact to its almost unbearably intimate nature. decade of 2020 Lament completed the band's maturation from '90s screamo pastiche to widescreen post-hardcore. On Spiral in a straight linetheir outstanding sixth record, Touché embark on another transformation.
Much of Lament faced its consequences Stage FourIts release and its effect on Bolm. Although the new album references earlier themes (“Ten years gone,” he notes on “The Glue”), his songs are subtly vignettes, sometimes feeling almost like a collection of short stories. Album opener “Nobody's” announces the break from previous conceptual conceits: “So let's mourn in a forward direction,” Bolm barks, his pleas bouncing off a seductive alt-rock groove.
Spiral in a straight line is an overture of reconciliation with the two wolves inside Touché Amoré: hardcore and indie rock. They're incredibly happy with the decision to feature Lou Barlow on “Subversion (Brand New Love)”: Barlow's trajectory from Deep Wound to Dinosaur Jr to Sebadoh (whose “Brand New Love” interjects itself here) is just as instructive about the ethos of Touché like any regular ABC No Rio or Che Cafe. The song itself is a clinic – a bleak, smoldering one that suddenly becomes one of the album's biggest barnstormers, full of jagged guitars and Barlow's pained screams.
The band has not lost anything from their adventure Lamentbut the songs are more direct and direct, weaponizing Bolm's raspy roar in service of the strongest and most surprising hooks of his career to date. The bridge of “Hal Ashby” fuses their anthem with the studied whimsy of an Elephant 6 band, all sighs and strumming guitars until it becomes a deafening scream. The chilling, swinging chorus of “Altitude” is a sign of high quality. When Bolm's self-inflicted declaration “I swear there's nothing new” collides with a dull waltz, it's a hilarious reminder that he's wrong.
