Review: Stage Four by Touché Amoré

"Touché Amoré has long been poised to be America’s preeminent post-hardcore band: they have memorable hooks, intellectual edge, and a formula that creates a canvas upon which they can tastefully address oft unspoken, pressing questions about grief."

On October 31st, 2014, the California post-hardcore outfit Touché Amoré was performing a mid-tour show at Fest, an annual Gainesville, Florida gathering of all things punk. That night, while frontman and lyricist Jeremy Bolm was performing on stage, Bolm’s mother Sandy passed away amidst her long battle with cancer. Bolm’s mother’s death inspired the songs and the title of Stage Four, the band’s fourth full-length record. Stage Four is somewhat of a concept record, but it is a concept record with a purpose rather than a concept record simply for the hell of making something avant-garde. The result is the band’s most accessible record yet; to call it pop-hardcore would be a mistake, but, unlike many other hardcore records, the lyrics of Stage Four are just as compelling as the music that drives them.

Stage Four’s heavy, existential themes are nothing new for Touché. 2011’s Parting the Sea . . . and 2013’s Is Survived By are both growling meditations on mortality and legacy in what the band sees as a largely post-religious age. The need to cope with his mother’s death appears to have challenged Jeremy Bolm with the task of applying the abstract philosophy detailed on the past records to a very real, difficult situation. Stage Four largely succeeds as both a stand-alone record and a step forward for the band: it draws from Touché’s past lyrical themes, matches those themes up with new scenarios, and then captures on tape what’s left when the theoretical meets the concrete.

Touché Amoré performing songs from Stage Four live for the first time ever on a Sunday evening in Mobile, Alabama.

Stage Four’s attention to minute lyrical detail sets this record apart from past Touché records and the band’s contemporaries. Here, Jeremy Bolm’s anecdotal imagery-based lyrics have more in common than ever with the lyrical styles of contemporary pop-punk bands like Modern Baseball and The Front Bottoms as well as other post-hardcore outfits such as La Dispute. Not that Touché even comes close to plagiarizing these other bands; Bolm’s lyrics and the lyrics of many other modern bands simply continue to express more and more a preference for the concrete poetic over the cryptic poetic. Bolm’s standout lines include references to a broken set of his mother’s coffee mugs on “Water Damage,” the final voicemail from his mother on “Eight Seconds,” and in “Displacement,” a coping method for his mother’s death that uses his own beliefs rather than those of his mother. The rest of the band backs up these narratives with explosive instrumentation and a gravitas of their own that their contemporaries would be hard-pressed to match. It is doubtful that the life and death themes on the record would sound more at home in any other context than backed by Stage Four’s loud, weaponized soundscapes. Occasionally, the record’s sound does depart from the band’s hardcore roots, and when it does so, the band seems to be seeking to create dramatic effect using new means, rather than seeking to water down their sound in order to make themselves more accessible. Sometimes these forays into other genres succeed, but other times they backfire.

When the record’s first single “Palm Dreams” dropped earlier this year in June, it included a big surprise: on “Palm Dreams” Bolm leaves his screams behind, and, for the first time ever, actually sings in a rich, melodic baritone. What the frontman accomplishes by both singing and screaming is very reminiscent of obsolete screamo styles that featured screaming vocalists alongside melodic “soft singers.” It’s quite possible that Stage Four’s use of the scream/sing dynamic will lead to a resurgence of this style among likeminded bands.

Despite the ambition of Bolm’s singing, these singing sections often unfortunately happen to fall within some of the record’s more lackluster tracks. The record’s final two tracks, “Water Damage” and “Skyscraper” (featuring 2016’s phenomenal breakout singer/songwriter, Julien Baker, on guest vocals) are both composed of two-part movements: in the first movement, Bolm sings over a soft section of droning shoegaze (à la recent Title Fight or Turnover) and follows up with a launch into screams and heavier instrumentation from the band. Even as a setup for these satisfying, anthemic builds, the softer openings find Touché exposed and out of their element almost entirely. The rhymes of “Skyscraper,” while compelling when screamed, are unfortunately trite when sung, and “Water Damage” could begin at its crescendo and cut out its soft opening section without sacrificing any of the integrity of the track. I give my props to the band for trying something new; it was an ambitious choice, but the result is not always up to par with the physicality and musicianship of the album’s better tracks.

Touché Amoré has long been poised to be America’s preeminent post-hardcore band: they have memorable hooks, intellectual edge, and a formula that creates a canvas upon which they can tastefully address oft unspoken, pressing questions about grief. Despite a few underwhelming moments, Stage Four is a nearly-perfect record. Touché Amoré chose to take risks on this album, and more often than not, those risks pay off. The album is well-worth a listen.