ALBUM REVIEW: Mother Nature – The Dangerous Summer
THE DANGEROUS SUMMER make their entrance to Mother Nature with Prologue, an intro track mostly made up of a voice memo from someone with clear affection for its intended recipient. The move from Prologue into first song Blind Ambition is seamless and sets a tone of the fiery agony that so permeates the rest of Mother Nature. The tinnitus-like, high-pitched guitar harmonic drone running through most of Prologue and Blind Ambition feels like a pain that just won’t let up; something chronic. Second song Bring Me Back To Life gracefully drags into an eighties world, but maintains the rawness of this band beautifully, like U2 with more heartbreak. Much like Blind Ambition, there isn’t an abundance of energy here. There’s a sense that a slower pace is actually intentional. A low rumble of nostalgia and regret seems to echo throughout this record and a high tempo just isn’t necessary to fill the space that these songs are trying to fill. Bring Me Back To Life is huge but intimate. This is a song that would be equally at home at a ten-person dive-bar show as it would being screamed by thousands. Way Down feels like an OASIS song with all the saturated sincerity of super slow emo. Vocalist AJ Perdomo totally nails it here. He is so wonderfully raw and anguished. From a song that feels like giving up completely, next track Virginia is the first real pushed tempo and hopeful moment on Mother Nature. The drums pound forwards with a resilience that feels somehow reluctant, a dissonant feeling that seems to sum up the essence of this album.
Starting Over / Slow Down, a brilliant song though it is, seems oddly placed and titled. THE DANGEROUS SUMMER have managed to substitute high BPMs for passion, and they are a great example of the fact that energy isn’t imperative in a great song. Perdomo’s classy, repeated delivery of the line “Maybe I’ve fucked it all up this time!” provokes as much eagerness as it does despondency. This is a punk band dressed up in introverted torment. Where Were You When The Sky Opened Up starts like a B-side from BLINK-182‘s Neighborhoods, then develops into a gut-wrenching song that seems to focus on the idea of learning to stay alive without a support network. It’s one of the few glimmers of hope on Mother Nature, and it comes at just the right time. This is certainly a stand out from THE DANGEROUS SUMMER.
Mother Nature‘s title track feels like falling asleep after a terrible night out. She wraps around you in that self-destructive way that whiskey can feel like a warm blanket. This is the epitome of the struggle of giving up control to the world around you; a running theme on the aptly titled Mother Nature. Next track Better Light is something of an interlude. A vocoder driven, tipsy and meditative piece that moves like the earlier work of THE 1975. Absolutely beautiful. Album closer Consequence Of Living certainly isn’t a recovery song. Despite Perdomo’s repetition of ‘this is death’, this track feels more like a song for surviving despite an ongoing misery – adapting. It combines all the best elements of the songs that led up to it with more melodic vocals, synths and driving drums, all making for a brilliant closing track.
It can’t be avoided that there are some unnecessary moments on this record – It Is Real and Violent Red just don’t land as well as the others, but songs like Where Were You When The Sky Opened Up, Mother Nature, Better Light, Consequence Of Living and Virginia make up for any drier moments. Perdomo’s openness and rawness through this great, sad-chaos album carry THE DANGEROUS SUMMER onto a higher plane.
Rating: 8/10
Mother Nature is out now via Hopeless Records.
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