I put it to the jury that, with their new album 'My Shame is True', Alkaline Trio are now truly a Jekyll and Hyde band, changing without warning between a fun, punk rock Dr Jekyll and a boring, disappointing Mr Hyde. And yes, I'm aware of the irony that Alkaline Trio probably would prefer to be Mr Hyde but I've come up with the metaphor and I'm sticking to it.
As always, some notes to start...
- Alkaline Trio are one of my top 3 bands, for more than a decade.
- 'From Here To Infirmary' is one of my top 5 albums.
- The distinction between 'Dan songs' and 'Matt songs' has always meant a little split personality in albums.
- In fact, 'Dan songs' alone suffer from this disorder also.
- They have lost some bite with age, but this is to be expected and I'm accounting for that.
- Crimson is the last great album they have put out to date IMO.
- The new songs released so far are promising.
The evidence
Taking it's time to get motoring, just like Time To Waste on Crimson, She Lied to the FBI is an upbeat, positive start to proceedings. It's not spectacular by any means but like many songs by the Trio, I think it'll be a grower. What's interesting (for pop punk/punk rock nerds at least...) is that it has a resemblance to the style Man Overboard have started to gain success for, especially with the backing woahs, so I guess things have come full circle.
Not quite as promising is I Wanna Be a Warhol, which has been out for a number of weeks now and which I still haven't quite fallen for. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent song, not bad by any means, but there's not a huge amount in it to draw me back in. But I'm hoping It'll be a Mercy Me, a reallllly slow grower.
From there we rush head on into a Dan song, I'm only Here to Disappoint, a study of Jekyll and Hyde in itself, with a great opening, some really well written music parts but, fittingly, a slightly disjointed chorus that is a bit of a let down.
Matt comes back to the front but takes it down a gear to start as Kiss You to Death slowly warms up, picks up speed and becomes a turning point in the album. Much more like the style on Crimson, there is a lot going on in terms of songwriting, while retaining the sounds, venom and bittersweet irony that made us fall for the band in the first place.
Kicking on from the slipstream of the song that precedes it, The Temptation of St Anthony is the peak of the album, conjuring up dark images wrapped in sweet melodies. It is as good as anything from Crimson and, to me at least, is up there with any of their most popular songs. It even has a little bass lead break, which is a new development. The chorus is memorable for the right reasons, not dragged down by the cliched lyrics that have dogged the band of late.
From there I, Pessimist roars onto the scene, complete with guest vocals from Tim of Rise Against. I was really hoping it would be Matt singing alongside him, but Dan holds his own during the raucous verse as the dueling vocals add to the pace of the song. Unfortunately the chorus doesn't hold up quite as well and what could have been a great song becomes a good one. Clocking in with a time of 2.17, it is still a welcome punk song that adds life to the album.
As I have said, Dan can be quite Jekyll and Hyde himself and this has never been illustrated so well as the tempo of the album is upended completely and left bloodied on the road by the tripwire that is one of his slow songs, Only Love. I'm not feeling it.
However all is not lost, with The Torture Doctor delivering a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the album. For the most part this is classic, TEXTBOOK, Trio and it will be getting regular spins as part of any playlist I make in the immediate future.
Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of all concerned, at this point the album is loaded into the back of an ambulance and though it manages to avoid to flatlining, it never fully recovers and lives a sort of half life, just getting by. Not sure how much more I can stretch the metaphor but yeah, the last part of the album isn't great.
The verdict
Despite trailing off horribly towards the end, overall I think MSIT is an improvement on the previous two albums and there should be some keepers to add to the impressive back catalogue the Alkaline Trios have accumulated to date.
