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Are We All Angels is Scowl as No Doubt, which I mean as the highest form of compliment. No Doubt at its absolute height (Beacon Street through Rocksteady) was particularly interesting because it found Gwen really laying her soul bare against some of the poppiest and well-crafted songs of the era. But whereas no Doubt took pop song structure and pushed it into a ska and even punk territory, Angles finds a hardcore band pushing towards pop territory.
Even though the music here has a modern pop sheen, there are rumbling riffs stacked in the back. Feedback ripples throughout the release as broad, sweeping chords rush under the ocean floor. And maybe that’s why some people are having trouble with scowl’s evolution. They were soooo good at the classic hardcore structure (though even their earliest releases weren’t as liner as most hardcore) and now they are moving beyond that. But, the fact is, hardcore is a fantastic structure with power effects, but how many times can you build the same thing? How many times can you record Damaged? How many times can you record Earth AD? How about Age of Quarrel? How many times can you record Rohnert Park? I’ll note each of those releases also challenges what hardcore is, all while defining hardcore.
Well, here Scowl is in a growth period. It’s likely no coincidence that the cover features a moth on the cover and not a caterpillar. Though, I am surprised the creature depicted is the brown and black adorned moth, and not its more colorful cousin the butterfly. But then, the background here is filled with hazy, but bright colors. And that really ties into what makes the whole record so powerful.
At No Doubt’s absolute height, Gwen appeared miserable, and angry, in her lyrics- “Sunday Morning,” “Ex-Girlfriend,” “Tragic Kingdom.” Here, Scowl singer Kat Moss cries out “is anybody out there?” (The tune also has a nice little Hole/L7 style bent riff). “Tonight I’m afraid” she says, “I don’t really wanna see, tonight in the darkness, I’m afraid.” “Haunted” has someone pointing a gun at Moss herself and she says, “You want me dead / I’ve done it all for you.”
That is, everyone is talking about Scowl and they are one of the buzziest bands in punk right now, yet these lyrics reflect on sadness and frankly, there isn’t much hope sprinkled throughout. Yet, this, perhaps New Order, or even Joy Division, level of, melancholy doesn’t feel performative. It feels like the genuine thing. Just as Gwen was being VERY literal on Tragic Kingdom and Return of Saturn, these songs are so descriptive, yet tactically ambiguous, that this feels like a true emotional journey. What do you do when all eyes are on you… and some of them burn with hate. What do you do when you grow and evolved and your relationships with people bends, shifts, strains, and breaks due to your own growth?
These messages are, in a way, purposefully cloaked by the broad stirking, and somewhat poppy music here. Moss’ vocals are treated in the modern pop style, which I like. Meanwhile, the band shifts between grunge wall of sound, hardcore striking, and art-rock soundscape. As mentioned above, there is a sense of pop accessibility here, which then deviates here and there with a breakdown or a classic Moss scream. Oh, also, “Let you down” has birds and retro-synths in its opener and sounds like it weas taken from an ‘80s episode of Nova. I like that.
Really, where the record succeeds is that its true emotion and frankly vulnerable self-dissection. A lot bands put on a faux-show of emo, and others cloak their true feelings with poetry out of self-preservation, but Moss seems to jump in front of the x-ray here and let it spill into the lyrics. That’s not an easy thing to do when a lot of people love you… and lot of people appear to hate you. But, it’s not easy to grow beyond hardcore while remaining true to yourself either. (I mean, have you actually really listened to In My Head… or Alpha Omega?)
Yet, Scowl is succeeding in both of those arenas. Just as No Doubt succeeded as being the ska band that wasn’t always a ska band, Scowl is succeeding as Scowl- the structures built around them are irrelevant, which makes me think again of the image of the moth breaking free of its cocoon, which is necessary for its survival and evolution.