A patchwork of lethargic guitar riffs, dying-bulb synth glow, and generic disco beats, the Virginia band’s newest album feels strangely emotionally detached.
With each new album, Turnover have molted skins, shifting their sound in an effort to become more present. They’ve ironed gravelly guitars into silky melodies, supplanting pop-punk with their own softer style, full of saxophone flourishes and rivers of synths. Following the moody escapism of 2015’s Peripheral Vision, 2017’s Good Nature demonstrated a hopeful mentality, excising self-isolation and bad vibes by embracing psych-rock and easygoing grooves. In Turnover’s definition, maturity means aspiring toward level-headed cool. But they might have saged the studio too hard while making Myself in the Way, a patchwork of lethargic guitar riffs, dying-bulb synth glow, and generic disco beats.
The title track offers the album’s guiding philosophy: “Can’t put myself in the way of love again,” Austin Getz proclaims. Is it self-sabotage or fear of commitment that’s standing between him and the deepening relationship he describes as a “puzzle of dreams”? Unfortunately, this earnest line of questioning is watered down further by Tame Impala-lite instrumentation and Getz’s inability to sell his narrator as either determined or even fully willing to leap his emotional barricades. “I think I can do this forever, girl, if you will,” he sings awkwardly in Auto-Tune. A guest appearance from Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, a performer who can deliver corpse-reviving vocals from a mid-air leap, surfaces in the outro almost like an afterthought.
The guest vocalists, particularly Temple of Angels’ Bre Morell’s soulful appearance in “Ain’t Love Heavy,” underline the odd sense of emotional detachment across the rest of the album. “When you’re wrapped around me in your warm embrace/How can I control myself?” Getz chirps on “Pleasures Galore,” his voice again veiled in Auto-Tune. Yet he sounds eerily controlled, like a robot processing romantic pastiche. The lifeless attempt at Nile Rodgers-style guitar and the Muppet-esque synths do not add to his conviction. Love’s rapture is on full display on the lyrics sheet, but throughout Myself in the Way, the chemistry feels lab-sterilized. Whether he’s detailing a partner’s facial expression after a quarrel or the way the floorboards shake during sex, Getz’s delivery is boring and stale.
The album’s most striking moment is also its most bizarre. “Mountains Made of Clouds” is an ode to Sebastopol, California, where Gerz lived for five years before recently moving away. Some lyrics are wistful nods to the region’s natural beauty, while others outline a loose narrative: “Moving as fast as when I was/Spending my time running/From the lawman,” Getz sings. A lava lamp’s worth of wavy synth and viscous electric guitar make the music feel weightless, and by song’s end, the Pink Floyd melancholy fades into birdsong. There’s an intimate echo around Getz’s voice as he sings over raw acoustic strums: “Now my weary eyes/Won’t stop glancing at the door/I can hear the sirens outside.” Stripping the song naked, if for only a few seconds, is the closest Turnover get to making us feel those same emotions, right in the moment with them.
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