Touché Amoré return with ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’, their fist album in four year. As hinted at by the title, the record finds the band contemplating on the universal phenomenon of spiralling amidst a world of words, memories and pain…
A burst of post hardcore riffage signals the start of ‘Nobody’s’, the album’s opener. There’s a touch of Manchester Orchestra-style heart and melody as Jeremy Bolm sings about company politicians being character actors: ‘Saying very little, not giving any answers’. ‘Disasters’ follows with frantic screams of second thoughts and starting over, all being delivered over some ferocious drumming: ‘It’s what happens on an empty stomach, it’s what happens when I’m all alone’.
There are more mathy moments on ‘Hal Ashby’, an anthemic song named after the Being There director: ‘A misguided Hal Ashby catastrophe, not exactly something you plan to be. You gotta handle it gracefully’. ‘Force of Habit’ has a personal edge (‘I still climb every step to the door, it’s a force of habit’) before ‘Altitude’ brings in stop-start riffs and a touch of paranoia: ‘The air is thin, I can hardly breathe’. This inward-looking theme continues on ‘This Routine’, a self-critical overview of compatibility: ‘You’ve got a taste for the finer things, I don’t know how I made the cut’.
Lou Barlow guests on the incendiary ‘Subversion (Brand New Love)’ while Julien Baker joins in on album closer ‘Goodbye for Now’. It’s a relentless piece of hardcore-tinged melody that provides a fitting finale – and leaves you wanting to return to the world of Touché Amoré immediately.
