What happens when grief finishes? That’s the question Jeremy Bolm of LA post-hardcore heroes Touché Amoré wants to address. After his mother passed from cancer in 2014, his band’s album 2016 album ‘Stage Four’ was a natural reaction, as was 2020’s ‘Lament’. But Bolm made a choice to move on from processing his mourning through music, and in June of this year dropped a bombshell during Outbreak Fest in Manchester; a new album was secretly ready to go.
The track they premiered that day, ‘Nobody’s’, is fittingly the opener for sixth album ‘Spiral In A Straight Line’. “Is it enough to call it off and lick our wounds and put us into past tense?” Bolm asks on a song that’s devastatingly sparse. It’s very simple, the lyrical coils and slowly skating guitar push into a place that evokes the calm after our own tragedies. ‘Hal Ashby’ followed as a B-Side, a song pulsing with self-destruction and a desire for change, Bolm’s deliberating intonation gushing with intention over reassuring guitar. The second you take a closer listen to the lyrics, which is sometimes difficult to do when you’re floating in oceans of pretty distortion, you realise this album is personal exorcism for Bolm, a purging of the desire to stay in mourning forever. He wants to get better, to move on, and this is his statement of intention. Comparisons could be drawn with Caleb Shomo manifesting his own happiness on Beartooth’s ’The Surface’, and it’s an admirable idea; express where and who you want to be through your music, simultaneously holding yourself accountable to fulfil your intentions with each download.
It helps to have your support network around you, and that’s just what Touché Amoré have done. ‘Subversion’ features Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr and blends bleak hopelessness with the brightening cracks of change, with an ambiance of a midnight Nirvana session. Layering the vocals is a touch of genius to make the conflict immersive. Julien Baker of boygenius drops in for aptly named closer ‘Goodbye For Now’, a soft and regretful track that drifts in and out of two separate states of existence before combining is a fire of righteous restarting. These two modes of being are present on each track, in differing ratios; there’s the soft, dark and devastatingly lonely emptiness, or the screaming rapid release. This formula works for them to lend voice to the remaining tinges of grief while not being mired in it. ‘Altitude’ does this balancing act incredibly well, with slowly slipping bridges that build on the extended metaphor mountain climbing before we’re struck with the quick bursts of dizzying drumbeats, disorienting clattering and subtly roaring guitar.
If you’re on the verge of making a difficult decision, this album will bolster you in ways you might not necessarily have anticipated. It’s bursting with the adrenaline rush of having made a plan which just might be achievable. ‘Finalist’ feels like a door opening. “Will I get used to this?” Bolm screams into the void, questioning his resolution over a riff that draws a line in the sand. The acoustic touches on ‘This Routine’ add a touch of secrecy to a track that glows with self-justification, and ‘The Glue’ is the ferocious sound of self-reclamation via sweetly atmospheric waves of rushing guitar and one heck of a pretty solo in the middle of all the destruction
Ultimately, this is a transitional record in every sense of the word. It’s clear that Bolm is travelling on his own emotional path, which is absolutely understandable, and that’s the theme that pours from each song. Their sound is on the move too; if we compare anything on ‘Spiral In A Straight Line’ to 2016’s ‘Flowers And You’, it’s apparent they’ve gone for a far more stripped back approach with this record, taking the paring knife to the depths present in their earlier output. Touché Amoré seem to have circled back to their roots on this album, except with a touch more hurt and resilience imprisoned in each chord. No one knows what will come next for them, but they’re ready to take it on headfirst.
KATE ALLVEY