Review: "Stage Four" by Touché Amoré

What is the music of mourning? What is the passing of a loved one, put to record? There are scores of albums on death as a general idea, but how often does one attempt to explain death with a time, a place, and a person? How often does rock music dare to fumble with the idiosyncrasies and messiness of one specific loss? When we think of albums that seek to honor someone’s memory, we don’t usually think of rollicking, power-chord driven hardcore. Touché Amoré set out to change that with their 2016 album Stage Four.

Touché Amoré is one of the great success stories of modern post-hardcore. Currently signed to Epitaph, they first gained notoriety in 2011 with their album Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me, then followed it up with the excellent Is Survived By in 2013. Their mix of screamo and emo vocal performance paired with a more melodic version of late Dischord Records post-hardcore instrumentals proved to be a winning formula, gaining them widespread acclaim and a devoted fanbase.

Is Survived By continued Touché Amoré’s heart-on-the-sleeve lyrical approach while incorporating a new, more dynamic sound. Stage Four finds the band changing their instrumentals further to adapt to a lyrical shift, as the album focuses almost exclusively on the death of lead singer Jeremy Bolm's mother to cancer. The lyrics are as sharp and intensely personal as ever but are uniquely potent in their opaqueness. The listener cannot fully understand the life and death of Bolm’s mother, as many lyrics approach the loss with a sense of removal. The death itself is never made explicit; what surrounds death is what drives much of the album. While Is Survived By marked a break from prior works with a cleaner recording and ambitious, explosive song structures, this new album takes a step back to focus on melody and atmosphere. Many songs no longer burn with punk ferocity; instead, the focus has shifted to carefully written and executed guitar passages and verse-chorus-verse formats. The music and lyrics pair wonderfully here. With a more subtle writing approach and a more restrained sound, this is an album that commits to its theme, exploring every aspect of letting go, however painful it may be.

Sacrificing a more raw sound may turn some fans off, their new instrumental approach remains incredibly exciting. For example, the track "Benediction" - the verses are sung with clean vocals in Bolm's middle range, a seemingly odd choice as the song describes the lead-up and days after the funeral. But as Bolm jumps into the chorus, which is a word-for-word recounting of a song sung at his mother's wake, he switches into an explosive, heart-wrenching scream. Breaking out a loud/soft dynamic in emo music is often overdone, but in this case, it's well-deserved. It's a heartbreaking moment in an album filled with them.

The fact that Touché Amoré can deliver one gut-punch after another is a testament not only to the lyricism and instrumental precision but to the flow and development of the record. As the story of the album unfolds, Bolm takes on loss through many different lenses, picking up his own mourning and examining it from multiple angles. The writing is exceptional throughout. While Bolm doesn't exactly think outside the box in terms of lyrical themes (cowardice, loss, faith, death) he eschews heaping on forced metaphors and painfully obvious ideas, making himself strip back layers of his psyche until simple, painful realizations come to the surface. Take "Rapture"; Bolm yells, "I was comfortable", admitting his guilt and refusing to absolve himself all in three words. In "Eight Seconds", the last lyrics of the song describe the phone call Bolm received when he learned his mother passed - the buildup to this moment is executed almost flawlessly.

Stage Four was produced by Brad Wood, who handled Is Survived By. The album is clean almost to a fault, softening the band’s sound. However, the mixing is excellent, with the bass clear and unmuddied, the drums tight and punchy with snare hits ringing out high, right between the listener’s eyes, the guitars warm and bright, and the vocals raging against the sonic deluge from the band. The sonic landscape is, for the most part, immediately recognizable and fairly comfortable to an emo/post-hardcore listener. The main complaint is a feeling of sameness: tracks don't have that immediacy and instant distinction that tracks from Is Survived By had. The homogeneity of the instrumentals doesn't sink the record, however, as the storytelling and performances are captivating.

The lyrics and vocal performances are propped up by some of Touché Amoré's most subtle and evocative instrumentals yet. The lead guitar line on "Rapture", for instance, is simple and singularly memorable - it could be lifted straight from a more subdued indie rock tune. “Flowers and You”, which kicks the album off, begins with springy guitar licks and a simple hi-hat keeping time, distracting the listener before the band comes in full force. "Skyscraper", the closer, is cushioned by reverbed and delayed vocals contributed by Julien Baker that are absolutely haunting, especially when the lyrics are taken into consideration. The track is wholly dissimilar to anything else in Touché Amoré’s entire discography, a pained, slow-burn of a duet that culminates with a voicemail from Bolm’s mother (mentioned in an earlier track) crackling through phone speakers. It’s one of the greatest ends to an album in recent memory.

At the end of the day, Stage Four stands head and shoulders above similar albums simply for its bravery. The album toes a line between feeling like a basement show, all clenched fists and pent-up anger, and a poetry reading. It is simultaneously visceral and cerebral, a unique meditation on the passing of a loved one. This is a tough record. It is not, however, the slog that many albums of this kind are; its brisk pace and evenly distributed aggressive sections buoy the melancholy. It explores many of the facets of losing a loved one, and exceptionally well. This is an important and worthwhile progression for Touché Amoré, and this album is a fully realized rumination on the complexities of death.

Tom Ronningen is a contributor to Daily Lobo Music. He can be reached at music@dailylobo.com