Review Summary: wait a minute; this isn't the new Title Fight record!
Run For Cover and Will Yip have essentially become the Bonnie and Clyde of today’s emo scene. The complete change in sound that the label has become known for with formerly pop punk bands like Tiger’s Jaw, Title Fight, Citizen, Turnover, etc. turning into more shoegaze and/or indie rock bands has been a fairly controversial one to say the least. Usually with these changes leaving fans split at the seams, battling it out over which sound is better. But the thing is, with so many of the modern emo scene’s albums being produced at the helm of Will Yip, if you’re not a fan of his sound/production style (spoiler alert: a lot of people aren’t, and for fair reason), chances are you’re not going to like any of it. An issue to be had with Yip though lies in that he has produced some phenomenal albums don’t get me wrong, but for every album like
Peripheral Vision or
Shame, albums like
Hyperview,
Light We Made, and unfortunately
Good Nature are also made.
The main issue with Yip though, is that he tries so hard to push most of these bands towards a softer sound, but his executions going smoothly are about the equivalent to a game of russian roulette for the fans, leaving him as the puppet master, and bands like Turnover as those unnassumedly being drowned into the mud.
It’s not that
Good Nature is godawful by any means, but the catchiness and aura that
Peripheral Vision gave off with its hooks and changing tones in most songs, is completely absent on
Good Nature. Seriously, the record essentially bleeds track by track into one giant coffee shop soundtrack. All the interesting lead guitar work that made songs like “New Scream” and “Take My Head” off
Peripheral Vision play so uniquely into the square center of emo and dream pop, are essentially nowhere to be found. It seems like everyone involved with the creation of this album went “Hey, so doing that emogazey stuff on
Peripheral Vision worked sort of for once right? So why don’t we just make an entire fucking dream pop record instead?! Emo is dead!” and then shitposted their way through the production studio where we unsurprisingly wound up with the incredibly watered down successor of
Peripheral Vision that will always stray away from the counterpart’s spotlight within
Good Nature. I honestly wouldn’t even be surprised if this was some sort of experiment to see whether the label could just turn into a full on shoegaze/dream pop label since Whirr had their shitstorm.
Good Nature in reality is just a pale shadow, with a muddy mix, safe production, and uninspired instrumentation to 2015’s wonderful
Peripheral Vision.
But theoretically, if I’ve listened through the album in full 13 times at this point, just trying to find some redeeming factor, and I still can’t separate one song from another, there’s got to be an issue. I mean of course there are some decent factors, like Austin’s vocals are OKAY, the guitars are OKAY, the drums are OKAY, the mixing is OKAY, etc. but when there’s nothing that stand out, not even ONE element, and everything else is mediocre at best; you’re left with a pretty big disappointment. Especially after an album like
Peripheral Vision. The only really redeeming factor this record could have would be with its songwriting but you can barely make it out over the goddamned reverb that plagues this thing like the Black Death plagued Western Europe and killed practically everybody. If that Beach House b-sides collection that dropped earlier this year didn’t really do it for you, well, I don’t know where I’m going with this because this is just what Beach House would throw out before even thinking about putting it out or even finishing it.
