Review Summary: What it sounds like when aging is the best thing that can happen to you
I have a complicated relationship with this band. I loved Happiness Is, one of my favorites of 2014. It totally came out of nowhere, I'm not sure anyone was expecting Taking Back Sunday to sound as grown up as they did. And the only album aside from Happiness Is that I don't pretty much straight up loathe is Louder Now, which is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. You can make all the excuses you want for Tell All Your Friends and your nostalgia for it, but I have never understood the praise for that whiny, over dramatic and frankly just annoying assemblage of angst. Where You Want to Be is pretty much just the same, but slightly better. Slightly. Louder Now's a guilty pleasure, I don't even remember New Again, and we do not speak of the self titled album...... *shudders*
So how is Tidal Wave, you ask? Well, it's real friggin good.
Good lord, is this even TBS? This has more in common with.....actually I'm having trouble making comparisons here because the album is about as focused as a Tarantino movie off it's ritalin medication. The lyrics read like TBS, in all their poetically angsty and occasionally just plain weird way, but they have a sweetness to them that I wasn't expecting. Stuff like Call Come Running, I Felt It Too, and especially I'll Find A Way To Make It What You Want (the lyrical highlight of the album IMO) are all either heartwarming or heartbreaking in ways I previously thought impossible for a band of this caliber. I mean I'll Find A Way To Make It What You Want is about divorce, a topic well out of TBS' emotional wheelhouse. Right? Writing about breakups isn't exactly new ground for them, but the maturity of the writing here far outweighs that of any album previous, even the likes of Better Homes and Gardens, a fantastic cut from Happiness Is
Musically, Tidal Wave takes notes from everybody from the Ramones to Springsteen, a sound they wear so well it makes you wonder why they bothered with that emo trash in the first place. But through mixing all sorts of styles, Taking Back Sunday creates a sound that's distinct and refreshing, largely due to Adam Lazzara's vocals. His voice used to be like nails on a chalkboard to me, but age has hardened it and given it an edge that is rather unique in it's cadence. It helps the music and lyrics so much, it almost makes the album sound completely original.
Of course this album isn't all slow and sad, songs like the title track, In the Middle of It All, Death Wolf, and All Excess (kinda sorta) have enough momentum and almost punky grit to carry them well into the recesses of your mind so they can get stuck in your head at inconvenient times. Those songs are well done lyrically, even if they're not particularly exceptional. The band has an energy on this album that either sounded forced on later albums or just accompanied poor musicianship on early albums.
So this is absolutely one of my favorite albums of the year, in a rather shocking turn of events. I thought catching this kind of lightning in a bottle wasn't possible twice in a row, but I'll be damned if they didn't do it. While Happiness Is was the sound of a band growing up, this is what they sound like as well adjusted adults. Comforting, relieving, and a lot of fun if you feel grown up too.
