Album Review: Walk The Moon - "What If Nothing"

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"Our Heart's a mess..." - Walk The Moon, 2017

Midnight rolls around on Friday and while everyone else is making noise about Taylor Swift and her music - no different from the rest of the year - my eyes are solely fixed on the musical efforts of Walk The Moon.

Let me give you a quick rundown of my history with Walk The Moon. 2014 rolls around and I come across this single from a band that I had known a total of two songs from, but I knew there was something I liked about them. I would go on to describe that single as ‘illegally catchy’ and become a little obsessed with it. Of course, I didn’t know that song would go on to become the mega-single “Shut Up and Dance”, but the song would nevertheless lead me down a tunnel that eventually had me listen to the band's sophomore record that came out in December of that same year. To this day, "Talking Is Hard" is simply one of my favourite albums of all time. It's essentially a perfectly crafted indie-pop record and I just remember being enraptured with it and just getting it; from then on I was enthralled with the world of Walk The Moon.

Fast forward to today and in the lead up "What If Nothing" being released, I was wary. The pre-releases and the way the promo was being presented made it clear that this was gonna be... different. Maybe it was just the cynicism of a fan, but I couldn't shake the thoughts of the record being overbeared with obvious existentialism. As the album starts out with ‘Press Restart’, even the title of this song feels too on-the-nose for me: it’s a new chapter for you, we get it! However, the exact thoughts I had while listening went along the lines of “I don’t actually hate it”, after fully expecting to. The song itself is still a bit all over the place, and I maintain the idea that it probably would have worked better as a one-and-a-half-minute opener track, but there it is. We then move into the next song on the album - Headphones. I heard this song a little while ago via a live recording and I have the same opinion of now as I did then: It’s one of the worst WTM songs I’ve ever heard. I can't buy into the mish-mash of synths and distorted guitars and overlapping sounds that just seem to crash into each other. And then there's the lyrics. I am simply not a fan of those clumsy similes "I can take a beating like a good pair of Headphones" or "You laugh, til you're out/out of breath/CPR, Mouth to Mouth" or "I can stand the test of time like Harrison Ford" (what?!)

That song seems to embody a lyrical theme on the album. For the uninitiated, the lead singer Nicholas Petricca is no longer with the girl who inspired “Shut Up and Dance” and it’s clear that heartbreak is an inspiration for “What If Nothing”. This is just one of the major events that have occurred in the band and their members' lives to inspired the record, but half way through, it gets to the point that it starts to jar on me.

Positive points come in the form of songs like “One Foot” and “Kamikaze”. It’s no mistake that these are the most accessible songs here, with One Foot being a lead single if ever I heard one. I think it’s the same thing that the label did with SU+D, with it being the most radio-friendly track. It took a minute for me to get it, but I’ve really fallen in love this one and the passion that leaks from it. But even then, for every hit, there seems to be a miss. By the time you get to the back end of the record, the songs kinda come across as forgettable. One interesting moment comes with the song "Tiger Teeth". It's a nice little nod to the fans who have waited for a studio version of this song after hearing it live for so many years, but in the context of the album, it only seems to to serve as taking you out the listening experience and kinda highlights the problems with the album.

Every song on the record feels busy, like there’s a little too much going on all the time. One of the band's claim to fame is that they don’t use any tracks when they play live, it’s all live. I wonder if they’ll be able to keep that claim going forward.

I am in love with the energy that Walk The Moon exudes. You feel it in everything they do. In their albums, in the live shows, on social media and in their interviews. It's part of what makes them my favourite live artists. But I can't shake the feeling that they've taken themselves too seriously on this album. It's by no means a complete fail, and I get that they feel they needed to make this album as part of a "self-discovery journey" or whatever, but this just feels like an uncomfortable left turn from the Walk The Moon I fell in love with three years ago.

6/10

Go on, give it a listen!