Turnstile's new album sounds awesome, empty and irrationally inspiring

Washington Post

15 hours ago

Flex your head and this new Turnstile album will feel vacuous. Here goes the reigning band in contemporary hardcore punk, refusing to articulate what they stand for or against, delivering empty gestures with tidal force. But once you get your body involved, the Baltimore quintet's fourth full-length, 'Never Enough,' becomes undeniable. This music is all rush, all urgency, a crushing avalanche of sensation, ballistic and beautiful. Why resist that? Life is short, pleasure is irrational, and if there are any mosh-like reflexes encoded in your physiology, these songs can quite literally remind you how to move through life itself.
Yet, as the pit churns, peripheral clumps of lookie-loos continue to ignore this Cartesian riptide, preferring to blab on social media about the scalability of punk, the laws of gatekeeping in a digital age and whether a hardcore band should be allowed to make us feel happy the same way an Incubus song might. Does the material success of Turnstile still bum out hardcore purists? Or have hardcore's purest been quietly rooting for them all along? And what are we really gaining from this endless, tail-chasing talk about popularity and reach? Wondering whether Turnstile is bigger than Bad Brains, Black Flag or Minor Threat feels as exciting as comparing TikTok to fire, stone tools and the wheel.
What's most exciting about 'Never Enough' is that it's a massive-sounding album about what isn't there. The opening title track is a vague meditation on feelings of inadequacy, somehow sung with an ardency that should instantly make anyone within earshot feel 10 feet taller. Then everything melts into homework-playlist synth ambiance, foreshadowing the dreamy confusion that lingers for the rest of the ride. On the very next track, the breakneck 'Sole,' bandleader Brendan Yates sings about feeling 'so high, there's nowhere left to lean, when everything is out of your control.' What does he mean? Unclear. But he sounds like he means it with the entirety of his being. This has to be the closest hardcore gets to skydiving, right? Massive thrills in a big emptiness.
So with the help of drummer Daniel Fang, bassist Franz Lyon, and guitarists Pat McCrory and Meg Mills, the intensity and meaninglessness continue to accrue as 'Never Enough' unfolds — with much of the credit/blame falling on Yates as he makes his lyrics more aerodynamic, minimizing his consonants, going full-throttle on the vowels. It's easy to get a sense that words — or even worse, the ideas that words tend to contain — might clog up the sonic catharsis, leaving every lyric to aspire to the power of 'whoa.'
Incredible singer, though. Yates can move a melody like Sting, then scream in a blazing monotone like Zack de la Rocha, toggling between modes as if redirecting the part in his hair. His sense of melody feels increasingly colorful, economical and fingerprinty in the wake of Turnstile's terrific 2021 album 'Glow On,' and he loves delivering his rainbow notes in groups of five. 'Slow Dive' has a refrain of 'oh-oh-oh-oh-oh'; on 'Dreaming,' the word 'know' grows into 'know-oh-oh-oh-oh'; throughout 'Time Is Happening,' each line lasts five syllables — and while that titular phrase is almost comically vapid, Yates makes it feel as heavy as life and death.
There's a profound yearning to be felt every time he opens his throat, and if anything tethers Turnstile to the greater ideology of hardcore, maybe it's that. Or, if not, should all of this band's gorgeous nothingness be parsed as a new iteration of punk nihilism? From the Sex Pistols on down, punk's rage against our doomed future has always been underscored by a latent yearning for peace and justice. Where does Turnstile currently stand in that continuum? Who knows? But at a moment when plenty of punks are out in the street protesting rising authoritarianism and senseless war, it feels baffling for the most celebrated band in all of hardcore to be this politically inert.
Regardless, the musical zeal of 'Never Enough' at least earns it Rorschach-blot status. Listen closely to these songs, then to yourself. Maybe you hear loud, friendly, exhilarating 21st-century rock music that's easy to feel, easy to feel a part of. Or maybe you hear Turnstile's blank-slated spaciousness as a gesture of possibility, inspiration and empowerment. To do what? That's on you. But whether it's out of an airplane, into a mosh pit or into the streets, this music will push you if you don't jump.