Touché Amoré : Spiral in a Straight Line
The most immediately striking thing about the latest record from Los Angeles hardcore mainstays Touché Amoré is how unpolished it sounds. The quintet have been reducing rooms to rubble for 17 years now—they’re as professional as it gets, and you don’t get into your second decade as a band without making something stick—but the rawness behind this set of 11 songs is a change of course from their more spacious and tempered pair of previous albums. Stick the same five people (Jeremy Bolm, Nick Steinhart, Clayton Stevens, Tyler Kirby and Elliot Babin) in a room with the same producer that worked on their last record (2020’s Lament) and you’d expect something similar this time around, right? The infamously demanding Ross Robinson is not most producers, and Touché Amoré are not most bands; so when opener “Nobody’s” immediately goes for the throat, you sit up and listen.
Spiral in a Straight Line is billed as their sixth studio album, but it manages to capture the feeling of their live show better than any of its predecessors thanks to how naturally huge everything sounds. Since 2010 they’ve been on a constant upward trajectory, even taking time to blow 2009 debut …To the Beat of a Dead Horse out of the water with a full re-recording for its 10th anniversary. (Yes, Dead Horse X is canon, we said it.) Spiral in a Straight Line perfectly balances intimacy and room-filling grandeur, with Bolm’s lyrics typically introspective and self-lacerating. We’re not even six minutes into the record before he takes himself to task for being an overthinker on “Hal Ashby” (“I read into every word that doesn’t come from my my mouth”), while “This Routine” examines the long-distance connections and pitfalls of a life on the road.
In a discography laden with hooks that would shame plenty of their contemporaries, their first album in four years stands proud. Even at its most restrained, the record twitches with nervous energy, a sense of agitation seeping into the quietest moments; such as when the band take their collective foot off the gas on “Force of Habit,” an ode to getting stuck in familiar routines that finds the five-piece doing all they can to fight off worries, expressed elsewhere by Bolm on “Altitude,” concerning artistic decline. He’s mined a rich lyrical seam over the years, giving voice to ruminations on legacy (with Is Survived By’s self-examination giving important context to penultimate track “The Glue,” itself a postscript to Stage Four’s exploration of harrowing grief) and the after-effects of loss, as well as an ever-present sense of imposter syndrome that “Altitude” and “Mezzanine” tap into: “Up all night and late to wake, I swear there’s nothing new”; “What makes me so weak is I am not unique—a tire fire happening internally.”
If you were wondering: yes, the latter namechecks the 1998 Massive Attack classic; the soundtrack to Bolm getting lost in his head and going over everything. It’s one of several surprising reference points for this record; another is “Brand New Love” by Sebadoh, which shares enough DNA with “Subversion” that the band thought they could at least try to get Lou Barlow to reprise the song’s chorus over the outro. Firstly, he did, which is a great get and big win for fans of both bands. Secondly, it works incredibly well; Touché Amoré features usually go down a treat. Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra last time, Lou Barlow this time… they should give 3D, Tricky and Daddy G a call sometime, stranger things have happened.
Back to actual collaborations: Julien Baker makes it three for three on closing track “Goodbye For Now,” whose title reads like a send-off for the band; thankfully, a scan of its lyrics reveals a bittersweet parting song, a finale that’s particularly emotionally charged even for Touché Amoré. It arrives at the end of a 31-minute record that makes every second count, whose title and ethos searches for calm amidst the chaos. Spiral in a Straight Line allows the listener to experience everything, making the nakedly personal feel intensely relatable in a way that’s perhaps more immersive than ever before. Crackling with enthusiasm and refusing to be cowed by the ambitions that come with being a band on their sixth album, this 11-song collection is the work of a group of musicians who show no signs of slowing down.
Label: Rise
Year: 2024
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Touché Amoré : Spiral in a Straight Line
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