In 2015, the year that Turnover released their sophomore album Peripheral Vision, I was finishing my sophomore year of college. This was also the year that I switched my major, from music therapy to music business, and I was meeting a lot of new people in my classes, relieved to learn so many of us shared similar music tastes. Connecting over these common interests was harder to come by in my previous major, and I often found myself uncertain of if I was in the right place during my freshman year. With these new friends, I didn’t feel like I was just getting by, or trying to blend in. We bonded over new pop-punk and emo records, and I was starting to listen to bands like Dads and Modern Baseball. I wish I could remember the exact day I discovered Turnover’s Peripheral Vision but all I can do is narrow down the timeframe to May 2015, around the time it was released. Most of my friends were listening to it too, and it remained in rotation that summer, a tool to navigate being home and missing my friends after another semester. Through listen after relisten, it conjured the feeling of community we had created among ourselves, the thrill of nodding along to “Dizzy on the Comedown” as we drove around our small college town, the snow finally melting, the sun’s warmth coming around a bit more often.
Turnover released their debut album, Magnolia, in 2013. And while Peripheral Vision still sounds like it was made by that same band, their debut had a starkly darker sound, considerably more of a straightforward emo album. The band formed in Virginia Beach in 2009 with a pop-punk sound, finding themselves in the midst of a new movement of emo, breaking away from its earlier icons like Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate, but not on the same wavelength as the poppier counterparts of 2010s punk like All Time Low or Paramore. Turnover took more of an emo take on a shoegaze-influenced sound, evoking Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. While their debut was great in its own right, Peripheral Vision found the band in a stronger realm musically, their sound more confident, effortless.
When I look back on the album and its place in the new wave of emo, I think the album’s success comes down to its opening track, “Cutting My Fingers Off.” This song features all the best parts of the album as a whole—a grungy but dreamy sound, a humming overtone to make it all feel a little hazy, and punchy, moody lyrics, like “I hope you’re alright / and I’m sorry that I wasted your time / Never had the intention to make you go.” It’s a gut punch of total reflection, a retelling of love lost, and memories that still burn deep. Throughout Peripheral Vision, the tracks encapsulate a sense of being on the outside, of yearning for something just out of reach. On “Hello Euphoria,” Austin Getz repeats in the chorus, “I’m just so far / I feel so far away.” It brews with melancholy and loneliness, feelings that I was quick to latch onto in college.
The album’s themes and tones never feel too distant or difficult to connect with. Another standout, one that ties back to the feeling of being on the outside, is “Take My Head.” When discussing that song, bassist Danny Dempsey said that it was “about how it could be the best day and you’re surrounded by happy things, but you still want to be pissed off and sit by yourself.” This parallels the feelings of those early college years, growing and learning how to navigate the spectrum of emotions that can sit in your head, all at the same time. The album closes with the dreamy, twinkling “Intrapersonal,” where Getz sings, “Lay my head down / try and sleep now / can’t slow down my mind.” Acting as a sort of lullaby for the whirring of thoughts that feel impossible to escape, it’s the album’s brightest track in melody and outlook, almost as if the band finally made peace with their anxieties.
Turnover’s rise in the past decade has been a testament to their ability to grow, as their sound has changed and melded to keep their fanbase but also experiment with shoegaze tones on 2019’s Altogether. During the promotional campaign for Peripheral Vision, they opened for nearly every popular emo band at the time, including Pianos Become the Teeth, Sorority Noise, Citizen and Basement. Since then, they’ve completed multiple headlining tours of their own, and I have seen them at two of those shows in New York. Their shows are cathartic and joyful, their more explosive songs like Peripheral Vision’s “New Scream” hitting even harder when played live. This April, the band will embark on a ten year anniversary tour, playing the album in full for the first time, speaking to the legacy that the band have built since its initial release.
Peripheral Vision feels timeless—I recently texted a friend to debate which of its songs is the most important and we struggled to come up with an answer. For myself and many of my peers, Peripheral Vision is a time capsule, symbolizing a time of change for us internally, and also the best representation of a musical moment we all loved and continue to return to when needed.
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