Twenty One Pilots — Trench ANALYSIS & REVIEW
Published 10/16/2018
Sure, it has some careful songwriting craftsmanship that is obviously a step above the typical industry godchildren and those focused solely on marketability. It was a bit refreshing to hear some actual emotional weight in harmonic progression from time to time, and this band have indeed set themselves apart, though marginally, from other big-name radio acts of similar popularity levels with a work that contains some hits in rhythmic energy and chord color. However, it is not worth championing as some sort of must-listen album for the year only because it possibly surpasses low-set expectations. If all you want is to follow pop culture and listen to the mainstream sound that everyone around you is listening to, this isn’t a terrible choice. If you simply want to listen to good music, this won’t be hugely gratifying.
Despite Twenty One Pilots breaking the mold of modern formulaic pop rock with a variety of stylistic melodic deliveries and some more textural dimension, much of the music was still rather naïve and underdeveloped. The actual melodic lines are the best example. Sung melodies were typically overly diatonic, contained little tension, had mostly flat shape, and given their rather standard roles within these verse-chorus forms, were overly repetitive. Some melodies broke through a bit with better attention to rhythm and syncopation, such as the rap in “Levitate” or the slow chorus in “Cut My Lip”, which therefore found the appropriate linear pull that was missing from this layer most of the time.
Those moments of rhythmic focus really only worked to even out the very mundane, brute, and unconnected sung repetitions in songs like “Chlorine”, “Bandito”, and the ugliest song of the album, “Pet Cheetah”. Not only did that song have a bad discrepancy between lots of structural activity and lots of melodic plainness, but also the sonic background let down its guard and sunk to being a cheap empty wash of random synthetic assortments with no emotional connection.
For the rest of the album, the timbre thankfully stayed rather afloat and substantial, even if texturally thin, with synthetic layers that were never overly obnoxious in dynamic or quality. Again, it’s a step up from trying to sound fun with a one-dimensional loud dynamic build and frilly lead synth. The opening song “Jumpsuit” was really the only song that lacked a semblance of sonic nuance, reverting too much down the stretch to the generic guitar power chords and amped synth additions that were all too basic. The electric guitar was a good, appropriate focal point when featured throughout the rest of the work, giving a needed grounded and relatable feel to a sound otherwise made up of simple drum machines and eccentric electronic noise.
While the sound could have been much worse, it also could have been much better. It didn’t sound offensive, but it rarely ever locked into a singular impactful emotional feel, with textural additions coming and going at all too obvious times and no instrument ever developing in usage or line enough to feel a sense of real progression. Only the song “The Hype”, which is a rather a strong song overall and was clearly my favorite track on the album, settled down enough in instrumental usage and direction to give a congenial mood and interesting atmosphere from start to finish, thanks in part to the consistent use of a soft synth pad over any big leads, vocal effects, or drastic entrances and exits.
That leaves me to discuss the album’s biggest and only consistent strength relative to itself, which was the choices in harmonic progression. Nearly every song’s highlight was its harmonic foundation, from the groovy pedal tones and funky 7ths in “Morph” to the smooth major and minor mode switches in “Smithereens” to the IV vi V I progression infused with inversions and color tones in the final track, “Leave the City”. This was where the talent shone through the most, however it wasn’t necessarily overwhelming.
You could say it was a bit surprising given what the rest of the music had to offer, but all it really came down to was six or seven pleasant decisions in chord patterns and color that deviated nicely from a generic four chord mess, which counted for about half of the album. The other half found the same old problems and same old mush in the lack of cadential harmony, tension, or directional purpose. Again, the song “The Hype” showed everything else up by displaying the power of simply meshing three simple and distantly related chords, I bVII and IV, with some rhythmic vitality. In a nutshell, this album showcased a few high points in harmony, which accounted for something, and had enough deviance from market-driven fabrication to be considered a step up from its counterparts, which isn’t saying much. Overall, it’s listenable for pop culture teenagers, but I don’t think it’s anything too impressive.
