Kinda Talking about Turnstile's Glow On

Kinda didn't want to talk about this right now but something was nagging in the back of my head.

I've written numerous times on this blog that I hadn't really liked Turnstile's "GLOW ON", as recently as this essay on Dream Unending's "Tide Turns Eternal". When it came out in 2021, I remember distinctly liking "MYSTERY" a lot, but when "BLACKOUT" rolls in my impression was ... oh, it's loud. Loudness is nice, sure, but you have to do something with the loudness. Of the songs I love to crank up to 11, The Stooges' "Loose" is among them, where Iggy Pop screams like a demon; that really expresses the extent he's losing his mind on blow. I recently wrote about Hotline TNT's "Cartwheel", which is like a tidal wave of joy.

Back to "GLOW ON", Brendan is just kinda ... sulky. Hardcore is usually an expression of frustration and anger; Brendan is bummed out. And that's, like, cool, I guess.

I always try to look at a song holistically: a song is the sum of its parts. Every time I heard about "GLOW ON", it's the riffs - riffs - riffs. "GLOW ON" is good because it has great riffs; "NEVER ENOUGH" is bad because it has terrible riffs. And yet I like (or liked) "NEVER ENOUGH" more. I think the jungle-influenced interlude in "LOOK OUT FOR ME" is brilliant; it seems to mirror Brendan's stomach coiling into itself in the peak of his vulnerability. If Brendan Yates is gonna be bummed out, the music has to reciprocate that.

I don't care about riffs. "Mamma Mia" has the greatest riff of all time; sorry, hardcore fans, you already lost before the battle started. I legitimately don't get this conversation and it, for whatever reason, dominates all discourse on Turnstile. It's fucking bizarre.

Which leads me to the thing nagging in the back of my head: this conversation is a huge distraction from what "GLOW ON" is. When I managed to look past this, it slowly dawned on me that, yes, "GLOW ON" is an incredible album and my favorite album of 2021. And it all came as a result of writing up "Tide Turns Eternal", when I transferred my thinking process from looking at the music as a digestible product and more as a medium for expression. There are albums that are more immediate, more catchy, more brutal and more anthemic than "GLOW ON"; but "GLOW ON" is this perfect little sculpture of one man's, or really one band's, anxieties and fears.

I don't want to get too into this because the album deserves a meaty analysis and I haven't really soaked it all in yet. So I'll speak on the songs that really woke me up to what the album is:

It began with "NO SURPRISE" which is a dramatically different song from every other preceding it: it's extremely simple, extremely short (0:45), not loud at all, in fact mostly played synth (I think, but don't see it in the Wikipedia credits), and sung by Franz Lyons, the bassist. I recall liking "NO SURPRISE" before, but the "breakthrough" listen had me looking at the lyrics:

Look around, is it windows or a mirror that you're looking out? Underground, we're swinging and we're missing with the lights off,

I'm staring at these dreamy, introspective lyrics that have occurred to me at one point or another in the most depressing parts of my life, and then Franz says:

and it comes as no surprise to me, if you don't want to look inside of me,

and this was the moment where I thought, I don't actually know what this album is. But it's definitely not sulking. The lyrics reminded me of PUP's "If This Tour Doesn't Kill You, I Will":

If this tour doesn't kill you then I will, I hate your guts and it makes me ill, seeing your face, every morning,
one more month, and twenty two days, if this tour doesn't kill you then I may,

(I love PUP, ok, I'm sorry I bring them up all the time.) A lot of music is cathartic, it's the artist having their little screamy fit on record and the audience participating in their fit. But these lyrics struck me as introspective, as having a level of awareness. There's tension in them, there's indecision, there's an awareness that everything is not as it should be but the artist isn't sure how much they're in control of it all. That's when I thought, You know, maybe there is a side to Turnstile that isn't immediately seen to the listener. I'm late to the party, I know.

I think what confirmed it was the other super-short track, "HUMANOID / SHAKE IT UP", clocking at 1:09. It's a simple chugging riff with, I'm pretty sure, hearty references to the Pandemic, what with the band getting together to sing "Ain't nobody getting in (locked down), / ain't nobody getting out (locked down), / ain't no other way around (locked down), / now you're in a lockdown", with the band grunting and hoo-ing. Then, halfway through this already very short song, Brendan screams "STUCK INSIDE YOUR FRAME IT'S GOT YOU NOW!" with the band roaring "SHAKE IT UP!"

So let's re-examine what I just said: is it ... really a song about the Pandemic? I mean, when you say the word "lockdown" in 2021, it's hard to think what else it could be about. But analyzing the lyrics and the other songs in the album, it seems the song is really about a person, the concept of nothing reaching and connecting to that person. It's a lockdown of the mind, not too different from the actual lockdown where the cessation of physical activity also neutered all of society's emotional development, for some reason. The latter half of the song is almost a reflex, that same mind trying to get out of its funk with the stormtrooper-like command "SHAKE IT UP!"

But I'm more fascinated by the song structurally. A traditional song is a harmony of elements with high points of great emotional resonance to the listener. "HUMANOID / SHAKE IT UP", with its two-act structure, is not a traditional song; it is a narrative, a performance piece. It's, frankly, arty-farty. And that's really interesting, because it accomplishes in conveying what the band is trying to depict, that of the depressive lows a person can get to when they don't feel human or they feel only human-like; "HUMANOID", essentially.

What follows "HUMANOID / SHAKE IT UP" is the pummeling "ENDLESS", beginning with Yates' "BRAIN IS IN THE CLOUDS, / SHOT DOWN EVERY TIME I COME AROUND AND TRY TO GET IT OFF THE GROUND" ... but let's leave the analysis there. As I said, now is not the right time to get super into it.

But this is the fine distinction to me: there are albums about the music, and there are albums where the music is merely a vehicle for expression. I don't think "GLOW ON" is the former, but I absolutely think, now, it's the latter. The hardcore aspect of the music is designed to awaken the animalistic parts of its listener; however, in a clever twist, it focuses on the demons of Doubt, Uncertainty and Insecurity, particularly concerning one's relationships with other people and oneself. When looking at the lyrics of the songs, they're not against people, but they're against the gnawing feeling within the band of, "I don't know what it is to be a human," as can be gleamed from "DON'T PLAY", "UNDERWATER BOI", and "HOLIDAY". In "DON'T PLAY" particularly, Yates seems like he's on the edge of a nervous breakdown screaming "DON'T PLAY, / DON'T PLAY ME OUT." Traditionally the anger of hardcore is militant, directed, precise; Turnstile managed to figure out a way to make it hazy, to diffuse it, to allow it to wallow and widen. It's fucking brilliant, and this is accomplished by way more than the riff. And I'm not sure if you can pinpoint one band member for this innovation.

Of course, after this analysis, I like "GLOW ON" more than "NEVER ENOUGH", but I think it mostly has to do with "NEVER ENOUGH" being a. a bit overstuffed and too long (many songs in "GLOW ON" are two minutes long and change into different songs within that time frame) and b. confused aesthetically but ultimately c. the right direction for the band. Like, anyone who gave Radiohead shit for not doing guitar-hero tricks in "OK Computer" (1997) is just an idiot.