Turnstile - Glow On

I failed to actually finish writing like 9 album reviews this past week, but i stumbled upon Turnstile's NPR Tiny Desk (Home) set, and i love Blackout, so let's just press ahead. I'm sure i'll get back to Giant Stride and the Voodoo Violin Concerto and some others at some point, but the comment "this sounds and feels like drinking an energy drink in a library" is too funny to pass up. Punk Rock in inappropriate places, here we go. 

Blackout is the only song i know, so let's check out their 2021 LP Glow On. They seem to release more EPs than full lengths, and that's pretty great, but Glow On is what i chose. 

I take it back, i guess i have heard Mystery. I've listened to the whole thing now, and i am perplexed. I know without a doubt i have never listened to this album, but don't tell my overwhelming sense of deja vu that, because it feels like i have. It could just be the ultra-identifiable vocals making every song sound immediately identifiable as Turnstile, or it could just be the general bizarrity of Hardcore/Skate Punk with synthesizers. What's with all the Vaporwave lately? I mean, yeah, sure, everone was basically locked in their own houses with their cheap consumer electronics for a year, so i guess it makes sense as an undercurrent in the quarantine, but why specifically 80s Synth-Pop? Is that the Gen-X legacy, gameboys and casio keyboards and reverb tanks and adidas track suits in the attic? It's weird. Is that what we should consider kitsch right now? 

Regardless, as soon as you get used to the Frankie Goes To Hollywood-esque intrusions, this is just immensely enjoyable Skate Punk like from back when i was a tween. It's lovely. 

But is it really as anachronistically absurd as a 4Loco at the Synagogue? Not any more so than chugging 3 Mountain Dews to stay up all night looking for traces of data loss in the printout of a garbage file like that scene in Hackers. Turnstile could totally have existed in the 90s, these kids were just toddlers at the time. 

What is a bit of a stranger thing is that they do not in any way sound like they are from Baltimore. I don't mean bands from Baltimore don't sound like this, i mean they don't sound like Tori Amos or Phillip Glass or Sisqo. Widen it out to all of Maryland and yeah they have a fair bit in common with Good Charlotte and Fugazi, but Turnstile sounds way more like a generic California band than Clutch or Periphery, that's for sure. It's like Suicidal Tendencies and A-Ha were double booked and they were all good sports and had fun confusing the hell out of everyone for an hour. 

Should i see what Turn-thony Stile-tano had to say about it? Sure, maybe he understands what's going on here. 

"Dream Punk." Ok, yeah, i'll accept that neologism. 

Yeah, he has no clue either, as evidenced by mentioning 311. This is a Hardcore band making a Hardcore album that also has a lot of other weird crap tetrised into it. 

Whatever it is, i think we can all agree it's both interesting and highly listenable, but in a reverberantly aquatic kind of way. It smells like you just climbed out of a freshly chlorinated pool and opened a bag of Doritos, and i can't really qualify it any better than that. 


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