Album Review: Title Fight – Hyperview

Hyperview album coverBack in 2009, when Kingston, Pennsylvania four-piece Title Fight released their compilation record The Last Thing You Forget, any reference to use of reverb or muted vocals would have been noticeably absent from conversation surrounding the band. In fact, up until the release of ‘’Chlorine,’’ the first single from their new record Hyperview, such aesthetics would have been seriously out of place. ‘’Head In The Ceiling Fan,’’ off of 2012’s Floral Green, was the only real indication of the direction where the band may have been going, though it was little more than a hint. Blood-curdling vocals and melodic, hardcore riffs were very much the menu of the day, the very name Title Fight synonymous with infectious barrages of emotional pop-punk.

As such, Hyperview has come as somewhat of a surprise. It’s not that it seemed implausible; indeed, the aforementioned ‘’Head In The Ceiling Fan’’ was one of the strongest cuts from Floral Green, reflecting the band’s ability to compose in a different style. However, the change isn’t just one of merely tempering the vocals and diluting the distortion, but is one of a change in intention. Nowhere is there the furious attack of ‘’Shed,’’ nor the strained emotion of ‘’Loud And Clear.’’ Title Fight’s punk roots still show its face from time to time, though rarely to the extent where they muddy the more shoegaze-inflected aesthetic the band have decided to adopt. And although there were definite alterations from each EP and album to the next, there is no question that the current jump has been their most dramatic.

 

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Title Fight band HyperviewThe intention behind the move has been noted by bassist/vocalist Ned Russin, who explained how  ‘we were looking at bands like maybe Dinosaur Jr. and the Beach Boys — we were looking at the moment where they found something that had never been done before and was now being done well. We were just chasing that energy.’ The extent to which Hyperview sees Title Fight do something that has never been done before is questionable. However, the marrying of various influences from the camps of both Dinosaur Jr. and the Beach Boys successfully gives the album a flavour which is intense and fun in equal bouts. ‘’Rose Of Sharon,’’ the only other single released prior to the album’s release, sees Russin’s trademark snarl chucked into the pot with guitars which sit somewhere between Swim Deep and Nirvana. One of the album’s strongest cuts, sees Title Fight become more than people ever really suspected they would. ‘’Hypernight’’ is another such example of the ways in which Title Fight can seamlessly and successfully combine elements both from their previous album with their newfound love for all things hazy and distant.

This mix of aspects both old and new can perhaps be perceived further in the album being Title Fight’s first with ANTI-Records on the one hand and their third with producer Will Yip, who also engineered their 2009 compilation record, on the other. The production on the album adopts far more gloss and polish than previous outings, but holds on to some of the prickling intensity which lay eagerly beneath everything Title Fight have done thus far. ‘’Chlorine’’ boasts a sense of menace absent elsewhere on the record, as the metallic walls of distortion pile up alongside the vocals until the result borders on claustrophobic. The video for the song emphasis this sentiment, the doomed aquatic nightmare which unfolds reflective of the enclosed nature the track elicits. The vocals elsewhere however prove a topic of frustration. Where here they espouse perfectly notions of a more tempered intensity than we usually encounter with Title Fight, Hyperview can be found guilty of drowning itself a little too much and diluting the composition into something unpalatable. ‘’Your Pain Is Mine’’ is less sentimental and rousing, more faded and limp. An instrumental approach which bears some resemblance to the new Viet Cong album may sound promising, but it lacks the sort of bite such a mesh of influences needs to lift it off the ground. ‘’Dizzy’’ similarly loses its way as it drifts and bobs around without engaging with anything of interest, and makes one yearn for the feral spirit which made tracks like ‘’Anaconda Sniper’’ so great.

 

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The yearning however only comes in short spurts. The band perhaps adopt their poppiest stance on ‘’MRAHC,’’ a track which runs like a Duracell battery and is undoubtedly the most direct the band go on the album. ‘’Liar’s Love,’’ a personal favourite, is a mash of the grunge aesthetics the band took influence from on Floral Green with the coating found in abundance on Hyperview, and the result is fresh, dynamic and thoroughly enjoyable. The ear for a guitar melody or chord progression which is truly a fulsome step into the world of shoegaze is perhaps executed most successfully here, with each chorus and verse dressed in the sort of performances which one would expect from bands in the B-Town scene, but feels very much a Title Fight composition. It is when the band lose this sense of identity, such as on the aforementioned ‘’Dizzy’’ and the album’s opener ‘’Murder Your Memory,’’ that Hyperview dissolves into a substance without substance, where its aquatic hue fades into bland transparency.

With so many other acts engaged with the same sort of aesthetics as Title Fight, it’s uncertain as to where exactly they will fit in. Reverb-laden guitars and muted vocals are nothing if not abundant in modern music, and when it seems that all the world needs is a new album in such a vein, we are presented with Hyperview. What ultimately makes the album work is in the way in which it, despite dropping many of the features of earlier Title Fight albums, it manages to retain its identity as a Title Fight release. The album is more tempered, more withdrawn, and more introspective, but it is clearly Title Fight engaging with each of these things. Hyperview is far from unflawed, but it exhibits a change of pace and direction which, for the large part, works rather well. The punks may have decided a change of route was required, though they made sure they haven’t lost anything along the way.

Rating: 3.5/5

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