ALBUM REVIEW: Give One Take One – ’68

Shapeshifting is a superhuman ability that allows the able to possess the power of all shapes and sizes. To shapeshift in music is to slip and slide through the cracks in the surface of genres; to toy with the tapestry that holds the codes and conventions together in place. Multi-instrumentalist and musical mutant Josh Scogin of noise-rockers ‘68 has spent his entire life as a shapeshifter, having pioneered mathy-metalcore as a founding member of NORMA JEAN and created crossover cocktails of Christian-rock and hardcore-punk with THE CHARIOT.

On ‘68’s latest outing, Give One Take One, their shapeshifting sensationalism – fleshed out by drummer Nikko Yamada – hits new heights and holds them up to the limelight they’ve always leant away from. There’s no need to worry though, they’ve not lost a single inch off of their kaleidoscopic collision of sounds as they avert their attention to the anthemic arena-rock attack of fellow two-piece ROYAL BLOOD.

There’s a lot of literalism to Give One, Take One; ‘68 give you a genre, you’ll take it all in, and then they’ll give you another and so on. Opener The Knife, The Knife, The Knife arrives with all the stoner-soaked blues-rock bombast of Villians-era QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE; Bad Bite brings the bark of DEATH FROM ABOVE’s dizzying tongue-in-cheek dance-punk to the bite of NIRVANA’s grungey grit-riddled descent into madness; Nickels And Diamonds bleeds the proto-punk of THE STOOGES’ I Wanna Be Your Dog into the rebellious garage-rock of DEAP VALLEY’s Lies. And that’s just the first three tracks, there’s so much synthesised into Give One, Take One’s ten-track tipples that you’ll feel tipsy at the top of it all. 

Give One, Take One is not a painter’s palette for the sake of putting all the colours on the portrait though; every twist and turn is as calculated as the last like a politician preying on the prayers of his constituents. Whether it’s the made-for-vinyl mentality of The Knife, The Knife, The Knife and The Silence, The Silence, The Silence splitting up ‘68’s devilish dance-a-thon or the grammatical groove of What You Feed and What You Starve’s ‘I said/she said’ wit; each song is a piece of a puzzle you’re tasked with putting together listen by listen. 

As overtly ostentatious as ‘68 can be, it’s the few-and-far between moments they move more subtly and slowly that slip under the radar. Closer The Silence, The Silence, The Silence veers on the wrong side of the tracks, lingering into twiddly prog-rock blues and overstaying it’s welcome by a couple of minutes or so whilst Life & Debt is the breather nobody bothered asking for from the fast-and-furious fight-or-flight muscle that Give One, Take One drives home. Then again, true perfection has to be imperfect, so perhaps there’s no fear here. 

If you’re foaming at the mouth for more rabbithole-inducing deep-dives, look no further than Scogin’s scribes. From the over-the-top tongue-in-cheek fourth wall-breaking blowouts to the politically-poignant, time-sensitive snapshots of a post-pandemic party, Give One Take One is at once as literal as it is metaphorical. When the world around us is as bleak as an episode of Twin Peaks, perhaps all we need is a quip as quick as: “We’ve got plenty of time for death in a later-on episode, but for now it’s just time to dance.”

Give One Take One is the closest the Josh Scogin comet has come to crash-landing on Earth and claiming it’s rightful throne as the king of shapeshifting stadium-rock, so let’s dance to that.

Rating: 8/10

Give One Take One is out now via Cooking Vinyl. 

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