ALBUM REVIEW: With You In Spirit – Balance And Composure

After a four-year hiatus, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE have returned with their first full-length album in eight years. Yet With You In Spirit is far from a simple comeback album, and instead offers a glimpse into a band laying all to bare and leaving nothing unsaid. It finds the band coming back together to confront life’s uncertain questions, contemplating themes across grief, mortality, faith and family. In interrogating such anxieties, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE create an atmospheric, swirling exploration of the human condition.

Melding together alt-rock, emo, post-hardcore and post-punk influences, With You In Spirit carries BALANCE AND COMPOSURE’s distinct sound cohesively throughout the album. Opening track Restless establishes the album’s hazier, melodic atmosphere, offering an intimate introduction that then pulls the soundscape straight into the more energetic, drum filled Ain’t It Sweet. These shifts between melodic moments and dynamic bursts never feel jarring, and instead build to create the emotional fluctuations of the album.

Weaving seamlessly between hazy melodic moments and driving riffs, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE move the listener through various waves of sonic exploration. Transitioning wistfully over from the slower and heavier Cross To Bear, the song Believe The Hype picks up the groovier elements of the album. The track stands out as a pivotal point right in the middle of the record, with an explosive chorus and a consistent sense of the anxiety laced throughout the album in its lyrics.

The heavier hitters stand out as high points on With You In Spirit, purely for their grooves and explosive hooks. Tracks like Any Means and Sorrow Machine display BALANCE AND COMPOSURE’s talent for sonically building in each part of the song to a much bigger culminating moment. The pay-off when they reach such moments finds these songs shining through as pinnacles on With You In Spirit.

Part of the album’s ruminations on the things often avoided sees BALANCE AND COMPOSURE tackling fear and introspection with a palpable vulnerability. Closer To God is a front on tackling of faith and existentialism. The track starts small and slowly intensifies with the introduction of drums and guitars out into a cathartic release of emotion. Similarly, Lead Foot is a slow, intimate moment nestled amongst the heavier hitters, but lyrics like “you don’t belong to the dead yet” pierce through and linger over the whole album.

Fittingly for the title track, With You In Spirit culminates the album with each of these themes. Moving between reverberant guitar solos and explosive choruses, the song sonically builds to a climax fitting to conclude such an emotionally wrought album.

It’s difficult to know if BALANCE AND COMPOSURE find answers to their introspective questioning on With You In Spirit. Maybe that’s the point. It’s in the voicing of things often left unsaid, the confronting of the anxieties that often lead to no answer, and the coming together to do so that With You In Spirit exists. BALANCE AND COMPOSURE’s first album in eight years does not ever show signs of rust. With You In Spirit is a testament to the power of coming together to voice emotion, and is an excellent return for the band.

Rating: 8/10

With You In Spirit is out now via Memory Music.

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