Hi, everyone. Sorry For The Waittano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new twenty one pilots album, Clancy.

Here we have the newest full-length LP from music duo twenty one pilots. It's their seventh LP, which surprisingly, I was looking forward to. Surprising because historically, I haven't really been a twenty one pilots boy, especially when it comes to their early stuff. I'm not saying there's no substance at all to Tyler Joseph's songwriting and that it doesn't have its merits, but esthetically, their music is just not really my cup of tea.

Funky pop, punky white boy, ukulele rap, reggae mix. It makes my skin crawl. But in twenty one pilots defense, musically, they have matured quite a bit since then. And nowhere is that more obvious than on the duo's 2018 record Trench, a high concept rock album dealing in themes around mental health, religion, personal struggle. And all of these ideas were being fed through this character-driven narrative around a mysterious cult-like group/religious institution and its control on society, which was undeniably a creative angle for the record to take. If it makes the songwriting more compelling in the long run, I'm all for it.

Even the almost endless layers of lore around Trench don't speak to me as much as it does the band's most hardcore fans. Because honestly, as much as I do enjoy that record and some other twenty one pilots songs too, I'm not personally driven to pick up every single reference going on in every track, in every lyric. However, I do generally like thematic songwriting and storytelling, and it was nice to hear twenty one pilots nail that so well as an abstract on Trench.

It's also nice to see them go back to that after such a disappointing follow-up on Scaled and Icy in 2021, which was a record that felt like the duo was throwing away everything that made Trench work in the first place, and after that, regressing into something that was as unflattering as a lot of the duo's early stuff. I do get the desire to simplify things, though, creatively. And maybe I'm wrong, but it's not exactly like twenty one pilots broke onto the scene making super dense, multi-layered concept albums and doing a new record each time that either extends the lore of Trench or draws up a new story entirely that is on a similar level, that can be pretty freaking stressful and would most likely lead to its own set of downsides if pushed far enough.

Still, on this new LP, the band tries to bring us back to Trench. They say as much on the opening track and lead single to this thing, "Overcompensate." And in tandem with the release of this album, twenty one pilots actually dropped a video explaining a lot of the lore around this record and the whole Trench thing, too. So yes, there is lore with this record.

However, this time around, narratively, things feel a lot more streamlined than they were on Trench. I mean, clearly, the two records are connected insofar as pretty much the main character and voice of Trench, Clancy is the main character here on the album that's named after him. But this time, we're not really getting bogged down in the rigmarole around religion and world-building as much.

Instead, Tyler Joseph is just going straight to using the Clancy character as a vehicle to explore struggles around mental health, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, disassociation, as well as addiction or things that could be likened to that feeling, those cravings, which is fair because I think this is a way for the band to get to the point on these songs without being too obvious about it.

Once again, with "Overcompensate" right on the front end of the album, it certainly feels like the duo is trying to sell us on something that is big, larger than life. High concept, once again, with this showy, massive, punchy, multifaceted track with these big, looping, '90s style break-type beats that feel like something out of 'The Matrix' soundtrack, with these dark, deep proclamations of, "Welcome back to Trench" to pretty much reinforce the idea that we're going back, going back to the trench era. The only thing about the track that doesn't really get to me is that at a few parts, with all the changes, the momentum doesn't always carry over. And some of the funky white boy raps on the track, they're just okay. Even if on some level, they feel like a callback, maybe inadvertently to a band like 311 and some of their biggest hits. But if you could take them and make them darker and more futuristic. I mean, the intro is fireworks, that's for sure.

But the real magic of the record, I think, comes with the first leg of songs in the tracklist. All the killer rock tunes like "Next Semester", which is really punchy and punky. It's an anthem that's just ooosing early Block Party and The Killers. And the lyrics tell a story of a chaotic mental break that pretty much involves blacking out, as Tyler describes. He can't quite remember everything. He remembers some things. I'm not going to spoil the whole track, but I do love the way the progression of the song shifts and breaks us from one point to the next, especially as we're shocked to hear things like, "Hey, get out of the road!"

Following this is the track "Backslide," which is this eerie demon-voiced pop-rap track with a soaring hook. And narratively, It's a very essential anthem on the record as a very massive theme of it is all about breaking destructive patterns. Trying not to fall back into old habits because as it said on the song, "there is no chance that I will shake this again," meaning if you backslid. It's a very good track. The only thing about it that I'm scratching my head over is why, again, on the back end of the record, would the band pretty much rehash this same theme and not dive into it that much further on the song "Snapback?" Again, just feels like the same angle, but with a weaker tune attached to it.

"Midwest Indigo" is another very anthemic and synthy tune on the LP. That also feels like it's pulling inspiration from some very early Killers or maybe even some solo Brandon Flowers, if you could basically cut out the Americana business and replace it instead with a bit of a pop punk flair, especially considering Josh Dunn's very crisp and killer drums on the track, which he always brings regardless of the track. The story on this one seems to liken the coldness of a relationship dynamic to just an unbreakable frost in very frigid weather. There are similar themes of longing and feeling unfulfilled on the craving as well. I don't think it's as strong a tune, but I do get the need for an acoustic break in the middle of the album. It does provide some level of variety.

There's also "Routines in the Night," which in my opinion is just good quality pop songwriting, cut and dry. The performance is, of course, dramatic and passionate with the writing being very much about just being in your own head and needing to process these very intense and overwhelming emotional moments, which is also mirrored as a theme on, I think, my final favorite song from the record "Navigating," which is a disassociation rocker that, again, pulls very much from the Block Party playbook with roaring bass riffs and driving dance punk drum beats. Lyrically, the track is very much what you see is what you get. And honestly, with this hook, "I'm navigating / I'm navigating." I think this is handily one of the catchiest songs twenty one pilots has ever panned.

For me, though, around the halfway point of the record is when things begin to trail off. You have these grading falsetto vocals on "Vignettes" that are just really unflattering, even if I do like the tune of that track quite a bit. There's also "Lavish," whose point that the track is trying to make about excess. It feels like a detour from the rest of the record thematically. And my tolerance for Tyler's silly, sad boy raps gets pushed to its limit with these bars over here. "So tell your friends at follow bots anonymous / keep it cool, keep the mood androgynous / I see your problem is your proctologist / Got both hands on your shoulder while you're bottomless?" Freaking Eminem ass bar, Jesus Christ. I

'm mixed with the final trio of songs on the record, which starts with "Oldies Station," where I actually appreciate the lyrics on this one quite a bit. The chorus melodically isn't bad either. But instrumentally, I just feel like this is one of the more dull moments on the record. The synths, the bass, the drums all come across, I think a little colorless and plain. Meanwhile, at the risk of feeling dumb, I love the sentiment behind this track, checking in on your friends, your loved ones. It's an anti-suicide track. But on this song, it feels like we've tossed out the Clancy Trench pre-tense, and we're essentially getting a track that twenty one pilots could have written and placed on any one of their first several records.

Then the closing track, "Paladin Straight, the duo does try to go for something longer, a little more progressive and epic at 6 Minutes and change. I do like that narratively, the record does end on a hopeful note for sure. But I just feel like the pacing of this one is tedious, and it shows a bit of a shortcoming with the duo's inability to write something that reads truly as epic and runs a longer span of time. Still, the track does have some admirable qualities, as the vast majority of songs on this record do. There was really only one that I pretty much all-out disliked. And again, there is that very strong run of tracks on the first leg of the album that shouldn't be ignored.

Overall, I think twenty one pilots, they made the We're Delivering You Back to Trench Promise, and for the most part, they delivered. Though in the grander scheme of their catalog, it does feel like we've just gotten a lesser version of that LP, or we've gotten a project that lyrically and functionally works and runs like an earlier twenty one pilots album. But on the surface level the esthetics, the rocking riffs, the boominess, the heaviness of it all feels very Trench. Again, you get that narrative angle and that Clancy first-person perspective, but without all the crazy concept layers that... I mean, as much as I like Trench, I question the necessity to begin with.

If you're looking for something that's going in that trench direction again, but is a bit more simplified and to the point, then maybe you'll really appreciate what this album has to offer. But part of me does wonder and worry about whether or not people who have already decided that they hate twenty one pilots and everything they do is terrible, will they even give this record a chance? I'm not entirely sure. But absolutely, it does seem like the fans are really rocking with this record and considering how much of a step up it is from Scaled and Icy, they most definitely have reason to be.

I'm feeling about a strong six on this album.

Anthony Fantano, twenty one pilots, forever.