Show Details
Braid
with:- Pity Sex
- Signals Midwest
- Thursday, July 10, 2014
- The Southgate House Revival (The Sanctuary)
- 6:30pm doors / 7:30pm show
Though tighter and cleaner and more controlled than Braid's 1998's swan song Frame & Canvas, the four songs on Closer to Closed successfully pick up where the band collapsed from exhaustion twelve years prior. And there are stylistic elements—the guitars on “The Right Time”, which wiggle and worm their way through the core Broach's crisp vocals; the spastic pop of drummer Damon Atkinson's snare as it further shatters already jagged chords in “Do Over”; or the way Todd Bell's bass bubbles like tar in time with the kick during “Universe or Worse”—that not only recapture emo's sum and substance, which they sculpted in the mid-1990s, but seem to build boldly upon it.
Though Braid is returning to music—that's right, returning—at a time when emo is is enjoying both a re-appropriation and revival, the band won't hop back onto the bandwagon they once piloted. As they write songs for a new record, Nanna and Broach aim their songwriting the same direction at which they've always aimed: ahead of themselves. “It's always where we're going and not where we've been,” Broach concludes. “I always want to accomplish something different, I always want to grow. I kind of have an idea of where it's heading with Braid and what kind of stuff we're doing, but I also have no idea.” And, for Nanna and Broach, this potential is the most exciting part.
