[MUSIC REVIEW] Pianos Become The Teeth – The Lack Long After

We have a new writer named Steve Parsons, and he chose to review the recent release from Pianos Become the Teeth as his first LMP job.

PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH
The Lack Long After
[November 1, 2011 - Topshelf Records]
Verdict: 10/10
Two and a half years ago Pianos Become The Teeth released their debut record, Old Pride. The album was a tantalizing mixture of hardcore, post-rock influences, and raw passion that few bands execute as skillfully as Pianos Become The Teeth has. Kyle Durfey’s unique singing and screaming wails in combination with the sounds written by the band’s two guitarists, bassist, and drummer are difficult to surpass. In the time following Old Pride’s release, vocalist Kyle Durfey’s father passed from progressive multiple sclerosis, a disease that Kyle’s own mother details on the Old Pride track, “Cripples Can’t Shiver”. The emotional trial is the pretense under which The Lack Long After was written.
The album begins with the quiet, pacing moments of “I’ll Be Damned” before kicking into full gear. Frantic but melodic guitar parts in conjunction with the pounding drums of David Haik encompass the eardrums while Kyle Durfey’s wails detail what his father might’ve seen as he passed: “Maybe you saw your mother, maybe she’s smiling, she hears your catching laughter, she’s missed your charm.” You’ll hear the hidden ambience of guitars as Mike York and Chad McDonald craft more than mere guitar riffs – this is an ethereal thirty-seven minute soundscape of loss.
The album isn’t entirely melodic guitar figures underscored by frantic drumming, however, as the group shows in “Shared Bodies.” Zac Sewell wields a crushing bass tone to great effect, lending a heavy aesthetic to the sound. Durfey’s lyrical musings of a lost love stand in stark contrast: “It’s as if everyone arrives already gone…some say love is time I helped you pass. Love is location; we were just circumstance.” The final thirty-second crescendo of guitar, bass, and drums thrashing together will shake your speakers as you hear “but I think that I felt more inside you than I would’ve liked.”
“Liquid Courage” brings you to some of the most depressing moments on the album. Durfey pulls no punches when it comes to supposed barriers between his feelings and his art while the band crafts a beautiful funeral march: “On the day you died, I cut my hair for the funeral. And on Memorial Day, I started drinking…because it got kind of hard just sitting there thinking…about Mom all alone in that house.”
Before the impact of the song fully hits you, the throb of Hail’s drumming becomes a furious amalgamation of pain, suffering, and love that is “Spine.” No lyrics could better describe the tone of The Lack Long After than “On Tuesday, I got the call that call that I’d been bracing for all week. No don’t say it. No, don’t say it…I watched you shake. I watched our hearts break.” As I write this review and listen to the song, goose bumps form all over my body. This is the kind of album that will be passed along among friends with whispers in high school lunchrooms and college dormitories, spoken in the same breath as Relationship Of Command, Document #8, and Full Collapse… the sort of album that will take a person’s thoughts and beliefs about music and strangle them into the ground as they hear this album for the first time.
The album ends with the most melodic piece the band has ever written, “I’ll Get By.” The song with the most singing on the album, it speaks of dealing with the loss of life, of our own, and the life of a loved one. The lyrics “You ‘loved life’, and those words have lasted. I just wish I could have had ears for more than what you said…’cus I still feel…the lack long after” tell the true meaning of the album title and what it means to feel after loss. The pacing guitars and drums begin to build up as Durfey admits: “It seems we all get sick, we all die in some no name hospital, with the same colored walls…and I guess that’s fine. But I want to swallow, I want to stomach, I want to live.” In fact, this lyric may best represent the overall message of The Lack Long After. One day we all will lose the things we love the most… but we can still live; we can still get by. — by Steve Parsons