Beggars - Thrice
Three months early and it has already leaked, which lead to an iTunes release date being pushed forward two months in hope that people would be a little less tempted to download the watermarked leak and wait that little extra. Truthfully, I was a little skeptical from what I’d heard thusfar of Thrice’s latest effort, Beggars. My hopes were answered when the shitty cellphone recordings that had worked their way onto youtube didn’t do the new album any justice. Being completely honest though, I didn’t believe that anything would be able to top the musical maturity that emerged with the releases of the Alchemy Index Volumes I&II and III&IV, being proved wrong though, was bittersweet.
The opening track All The World Is Mad is a far cry from their older tracks such as Identity Crisis or The Artist In The Ambulance and you can tell this from the moment Dustin bellows his first line. Though you have to admit they’re right, when the chorus kicks in and we’re hearing how ‘something has gone terribly wrong with everyone; all the world is mad’. It’s a true story, though it’s probably not what Thrice were aiming for but my biggest gripe with the music industry lately is how everything has started to merge into the same shitty pop chorus and I can’t tell one band from the other; The Cab, The Main, We The Kings, I know the names but if you were to ask me to name one song by any of these bands? Trust me, I’d be slipping out my phone and google would be my best friend, I just know they’re a little fond of ginger people. Every now and then something fresh comes along and Thrice are providing that little breather that we needed from the obnoxious pop-punk with this album. What the band were actually aiming for with this track, though, they executed well through lyrics like ‘we can’t medicate man to perfection again; we can’t legislate peace in our hearts. we can’t educate sin from our souls, it’s been there from the start.’
It still has the elements that the Alchemy Indexes and Vheissu brought to the table, but it brings a lot more with it. More talent, more experimentation, more enjoyment. Considering this is a band that doesn’t record as many song as possible and chop them down until they decide which of the twenty or thirty make the ten song record, every song is equal and I can’t find a single track to label a ‘filler’, one that’s there just to make up the numbers or to build up to the next track or whatever you might be expecting, every track has it’s own identity. One thing I was worried about was how samey the tracks were going to be, and they’ve dispelled any form of doubt I might have had. In Exile shows this perfectly, the verses were a little worrying but as soon as the chorus started to kick in, all was right in the world again.
The calm verses and the rowdy chorus seems to be a pattern that Thrice have coined for this album (and the previous two, to be honest), The Weight being a pretty good example of this, they have their formula and the execute it in the best ways. That’s not to say all of the songs on the ten-song epic stick to this one formula, that’d get pretty boring pretty fast. Instead, they stray from it in songs like Circles and Wood & Wire. Even the title track, and the track that finishes off this cd wonderfully, Beggars, doesn’t fit in with the formula Thrice have coined over the past few albums Really, it’s one of those albums that can only be played loud for the full effect of the epic Teppei’s guitaring and Dustin’s vocals.
One has to wonder though, with the lack of screaming and the more refined vocals, is Dustin starting to worry about his vocal chords or something, because honestly, I enjoyed nothing more than having my ears pierced by my iPod blasting the wonderful sounds of Vheissu. But to come out with three records growing in quality with every new realease in three consecutive years is something to brag about. Anybody that claims to be a fan of this band can hardly be disappointed by their latest release. Personally, I’m in love with it.
Beggars will be released on iTunes August 11th, and hits stores October 13th.
