Twenty years and almost a dozen albums into their prolific career, Alkaline Trio are putting out some of their best work in a very long time, maybe ever.
On Is This Thing Cursed?, the trio bring all the propulsive energy of their early work, without ever sounding like a mere throwback. The melodies are great, the songwriting is top notch, and while it doesn’t have quite the same degree of untrammeled audacity as the songs they were writing in their early 20s – how could it? – it more than makes up the difference with a healthy dose of wisdom.
More than anything else, it feels necessary in a way that nothing from this band has ever quite achieved. There’s an emotional heft here, a weightiness of spirit and subject, keenly balanced against the raucous energy of the music.
It’s a heavy album in many ways – dealing with subjects like depression and self-destruction (both personal and political) – but also a joyous one. A record which knows that music can’t release us from the pain that plagues us, but can help keep us afloat while we work on that slow process of self-healing. “I know you’re hurting,” it says. “I’m hurting too. But let’s sing together tonight anyway.”
I got a chance to see the band last winter in San Francisco. It’s always a little strange seeing an old favorite for the first time when they’re well past the prime of their career. There’s less raucous, combustive energy, and the crowd tends to be full of 30-somethings ready for a nice show that will still let them get to bed by 12:30. But with good performers, as soon as the lights go down and the drums start rattling, all that stuff goes out the window and you get to just live in the moment.