1/13/2016

"Before I die, take me to the place where we wrote our names wrong, but they shared a space. Branches and leaves gathered between where you are right now and where I wanna be. Between earth and sky, we'll build a fire so high they'll turn all the lights out and all will sing: 'I am alive, I deserve to be.' "
~Rage Against The Dying of the Light, Harmlessness
The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die

I've been listening to Harmlessness daily for about a week now, and I can't believe how much I messed up not getting around to sooner.

I didn't listen to "Harmlessness" in full before making my AOTY list, and therefore excluded one of the most moving rock records of the year, right up there with Turnover. I've been familiar with The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die for awhile, and caught them on their headlining tour with The Hotelier last year, and while I was impressed by their showing I found their sound a little too disorganized for my taste, too much space and dissonance, not enough hooks, not enough cohesion.

"Harmlessness," though, is nothing but cohesive, as well as continuous and flowing and sad and poignant and beautiful.

There's something so polished about this record, though it still clings to the free-flowing thoughts that made TWIABP such a strange, enigmatic act from their debut. I love how it delves into the most insecure of thoughts, how it embraces so many sounds and strings, how it is difficult to tell where one song ends and one begins, flowing into an hour of broadened sound.

The startlingly quiet and warm intro track drew me in immediately, and the mysterious narrative of "January 10th, 2014" kept me engaged, as much as the rhythmic, cyclical melodies did. So much of this is poetry, the divulge-it-all and capture-the-moment kind. Later on, the last 55 seconds of "Haircuts for Everybody" sounds like what it feels like to cry, and when I heard that, that was when I knew I'd be playing this record over and over again, that I would not, could not, forget about it.

With so many bands, the sophomore album is a bit of a failure because it tries to recapture the lightening in a bottle that happened the first time. I wonder if the musicians of TWIABP ever had that moment of anxiety about that, or if they were confident the bolt struck them at the right time.



"Change your life. Please, change your life.   Change my life. Please, change my life. 
We spent the last twenty-three minutes hallucinating over the phone.  I kept both my hands still while we saw the same building explode. Wreck this thing. Please, take it off the ground."
~Haircuts for Everybody, Harmlessness
 The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die 
 

8/9/14

"And when our voices fail us we will find new ways to sing.
When our bodies fail we’ll find joy in the peace that it brings. 

The world is a beautiful place but we have to make it that way.
Whenever you find home we’ll make it more than just a shelter.
And if everyone belongs there it will hold us all together.
If you’re afraid to die, then so am I."

~Getting Sodas
The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Whenever,If Ever

Lately I've been getting lost in the atmosphere, a conscious decision but a natural one. This morning I am hard pressed to find a band with a better grip on what it means to do this than The World Is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die. The post-rock swells and elaborate guitar parts build and decorate emotional weight. While their sound captures many tropes and styles of emo indie rock spanning decades, TWIABP feels larger than that label implies. They are as dramatic and grand as their name promises. 

Instrumentally, they work in textures light and dark, floating as often as they come crashing down. I love the rhythm section's work on their 2013 debut LP "Whenever, If Ever," playing with beat-focused intros as much as they sit back and let the guitar carry the climax. I love how Thomas Diaz choose to sing and shout, I love how scattered he seems and the way his words so often seem to cry out in hopeless recognition. He is as conversational as he is reflective, in the way early Death Cab for Cutie is, blending scenes of trees, cars and bedrooms with self-aware revelations on being alone, flawed, or human. The most memorable lines, I think, come from the latter, and they are placed to be shown off. Frequent use of group vocals add to the highlights, a vital layer in the expanse. But I'm not really listening to this band for its words, so much as I am seeing where they fit, how they fit, inside this greater interchange of sounds. 

For all their intensity, these songs are only so aggressive, they are too melodic to be thrashy. Timing is constantly played with, creating dynamic moments. Songs that begin in the world of echo-y, measured melody then pause for a string solo, and pound out a sped-up, cymbal-colored chorus before building a long, slow bridge to the end. In many ways,these are songs atypical in structure, and I think that is what makes them so good for deep, lost listening. They meander, in a way perfectly paired with ponderous, sad thoughts of being a wreck and being alone. 

I can see why this band is often polarizing, I can see why people wouldn't "get it," and I could see why one wouldn't want to subject their ears to something that is at times disorganized and strange on its way to finding moments of captured, heightened beauty. But what a journey that is to take.

"No, we aren't ghosts.
Even ghosts have a home to haunt.
No, we aren't ghosts.
We open doors and we shed our skin.
No, we aren’t ghosts.
Open your windows and let us in." 
~I Will Be Ok. Everything.

The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Are Here To Help You (Split w//Deer Leap)