Review Summary: When consumed by emotion.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence is a beautiful hatred. It’s the focused and unrelenting backlash against a love failed, against a gamble so invested and dedicated and yet, infuriatingly, still unsuccessful. It is the uncomfortable realisation that there is no redemption to the experience, no silver lining, there is just pure, unrequited vitriol, to the extent of being unrecognisably jaded to your former self as a consequence. Its arguable superiority to later releases lies in its flaws. There is no attempt at balance, no precisely crafted attempt to redeem the album’s imperfections, simply the undiluted embodiment of an emotion which is immune to such rationalizations and criticisms.
There are moments of contemplation and reflections amongst the fury, where Palumbo reminisces or reasons through abstract metaphors, but it’s futile. While the quieter repose in sections of “Piano” may suggest a being coming to peace with what has happened, the gnashing roar of “It’s THAT ***ing hard”, followed by the uncompromisingly relentless closing trifecta, show only that the clarity fogs over and the pain reoccurs. The lyrics deal sincerely and poetically with the grief, the self destruction: “shot glasses fill up your soul”, the causes: “Give me back my pictures of me. Me, you and him makes three” and the sheer insanity: “I like your pretty eyes better blackened, and my fists all ***ing red”.
Daryl contorts himself vocally to any measure to express himself, spitting and whispering as the spectrum of rejection pulls him. The music itself follows suit, sporadically and without structure leaping as though guided by the irrational fluctuations of grief, as often focused and meticulous as it is thrashed and broken. The emotional investment is affectingly relatable, and a radical take on the concept of a relationship. Concentrated severity, the album doesn’t waver in expressing the instability and terminally cynical perspective that a failure can instil, and the eloquence and clarity with which it’s portrayed serve only as a contrast to the nature of the pain.
We can forget, and sometimes progress past these pits of despair, the rock bottoms that we, as people, inevitably hit. We can retroactively soften and relax the bitterness, and question why we once felt so blindly critical, but the fact was that the raw emotion once existed, and to no smaller measure than this album expresses. Let this be a reminder.
“Pack your *** and leave (I don't need to know)
And take my memories of her with you.
Pack your *** and leave (I don't need to know)
And take my memories of her with you.
Pack your *** and leave (I don't need to know)
And take my memories of her with you.
Pack your *** and leave (I don't need to know)
And take her ***ing with you.”
