Album Review: Silverstein - 'A Beautiful Place To Drown'
Start to finish, this album is blisteringly good.
From the onset of the bass guitar at the opening of Bad Habits — as well as the beautiful guitar from Intervals’ Aaron Marshall — through to the comparatively slow paced and melodic closer Take What You Want, featuring Pierre Bouvier from Canadian pop-punk icons Simple Plan, each one of the twelve tracks burns its own little mark into your subconscious; an especially impressive feat given it’s the ninth studio album from a now 20 year old band.
The album has an incredibly distinct progressive sound; the songs back away from the stereotypical trope that comes to mind with any band that are ‘emo’ in any sense of the word — pop-punk whines and nihilist lyrics would be an exaggeration but often an accurate one — yet this revolves as much around delicate musicality and dark riffs as it does the actual lyricism and screamed vocals. The most obvious example is the featuring of hip hop sensation Princess Nokia, reflecting a band aiming to connect with anyone and everyone that they can; traversing genre barriers to become even more of a musical powerhouse. They are able to temper their inherent energetically aggressive sound with dynamic lyricism, evolving musicality and two decades worth of growth, to create possibly their strongest album to date!
Interestingly, the four singles from the album are all ones that feature outside of artists alongside the seminal, silver-tongues Silverstein.
In order of how they’re featured on the album, first up comes Bad Habits. As previously mentioned, the track features Intervals’ Aaron Marshall— as soon as the bass guitar kicks in, overbearing, like a punch in the face, it’s ostensibly obvious what the song will be like: pounding, building, and plain good. But that fails to take into account what Aaron brings to the table as he shreds any doubts you have about the song. The track plays with the duality of the catharsis of fighting against your demons and the crushing weight of defeat if and when you fail; toeing the line between redemption and regret. Yet the only thing I regret when listening to it is that it took me so long!
Burn It Down, however, is an incendiary stand out on the album; the intro alone is a spark to ignite the track. Like wildfire, its roots spread out across the cerebral plains and leaves you screaming out for more. The featuring of Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo, reuniting at least in part the iconic Silvertooth — though personally Bearstein would have been a better name — gives the track just an extra little spicy kick and truly allows the track to rise. A personal favourite, if as much in the sheerly cathartic ferocity of the vocals.
The third single is Infinite, with Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie. This song is a fair bit more epic, almost cinematic. It’s chorus is lofty and lifting; catchy and crying out for an adoring crowd to scream along with. Beautiful in its complexity, it (along with the following single, Madness) deals with lives spent grappling mental illnesses, and how they never seem to have an end; the cyclical natures of the disease that lead to self-destructive cycles.
The final single, so far, is Madness, featuring Princess Nokia. “This isn’t love, this is madness” — for this album, it’s both. The track is a lot more chaotic; going from periods of almost stony faced monotonous vocals, incessant in their refusal to change pitch, to angry, emotive choruses that offer some release; perhaps a reflection of the multiplicity of personas we have to present in the world?
Ultimately, the album is a triumphant, resounding success. Between hopeful numbers like “Say Yes” and the angry, almost politically rebellious number of “September 14”, the album creates a perfect maelstrom of undeniably Silverstein brand madness, with the listener in its eye, the flotsam flying past in a beautifully choreographed orchestra of auditory brilliance.
Words by James O’Sullivan