ALBUM REVIEW: Dark Ageism – Other Half

For some embracing punk a actually is a phase, something to momentarily appease and redirect the jaded complexities growing inside oneself, usually within your teen years. But if something sticks, and hopefully it does, you’ll find it’s like trying to get hot gum from the bottom of your shoe. OTHER HALF’s new record Dark Ageism is a product of that sticky gum, folding, stretching, morphing until suddenly you’ve released your third album in this band that perhaps you didn’t expect to be able to breathe in the way it does. 

As far as records go, Dark Ageism is as life-like as they get, full of poignant tunnelling monologues, riddled with the anxiety of perception, feeling the searing stares of everyone around in the back of your neck. OTHER HALF don’t quite have the same adrenaline surging through them as they once did, nobody’s saying that’s a bad thing either, because the mellow moments found on tracks like Feeling For Yourself and Lifted Fingers are the most sublime on the album.

In those minutes of tenderness, they coil for the next big release of riffs where they can exert themselves, particularly Feeling Yourself into Farm Games which sonically oppose each other. It represents much of where OTHER HALF are at, ultimately tethered to this punk intention but becoming more synonymous with post-rock sounds at times. When they fly their punk flag though, it’s dominant – Rotator and Dollar Sign Eyes speed ahead with the mid-30’s sweat that only bills coming through the letterbox produce. 

On their closing track Other Half Vs. The End Of Everything, they bid farewell with the help of the recently reunited JOHNNY FOREIGNER’s Alexei Berrow. A critique callout of the music industry and its often unfair, unbalanced, unwillingness to change and lack of support toward anyone born without a trust fund. Berrow’s soft spoken delivery sums it up in one breath “I wish I had some uncles in the industry that could bankroll me, It’s actually true I actually do, I just ain’t that invested in family.”

In that brief moment of protest, a lot becomes clear if you couldn’t already see it, it’s easy to be rich but it’s hard to make a punk album this good. If you happened to not be able to see it, you might have an uncle bankrolling your tuition, or most far away dreams. What OTHER HALF prove in their third full-length outing is that you don’t need to just listen to what pops up in a Spotify editorial playlist, or ask your phone “What song is this?” when it plays on a TV show, look deeper. Look for the thriving local DIY scene, past what’s dazzling with the light of a major label, smaller producers, bands, and venues that are made of tighter knit communities than the road you live on. You’ll probably discover a class act like OTHER HALF.

Rating: 9/10

Dark Ageism is out now via Big Scary Monsters. 

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