The Lack Long After was released in 2011, and I definitely first heard it by 2012, but I don’t remember the exact timing. Still, it’s long enough ago that it should mean something when I say for all that time it has remained one of my favorite albums.
Pianos Become the Teeth was first described to me as post-hardcore meets post-rock, which struck me as a brilliant combination. I think the relevant prior art here might be a band like Moss Icon, who I’ll admit I never listened to as much as I felt I should, and whose post-rock sound is more along the lines of Slint from what I remember, which is to say a lot of focus on dynamic contrasts, spare arrangements, and frequent spoken word. But also they scream sometimes, that’s the post-hardcore. PBTT (at least when they first started out) were taking more from the Explosions in the Sky side of things, the guitar tones and the way they ring out, anthemic riffs that build into grand spectacle. Rhythmically things are a bit more complex, with the drums frequently dipping into rapid runs along floor toms and kick drums, and tempo and time signature frequently changing. But also they scream sometimes, that’s the post-hardcore.
In many contexts, “post-hardcore” is really just the respectable name for screamo, and these guys were emotional, nowhere more so than on The Lack Long After. Getting into why unavoidably gets into biography. The album before it, Old Pride, foreshadows things with the song “Cripples Can’t Shiver”, a 7 minute long open wound, all low end at first, drum hits and buzzy bass moving things along while the guitars slowly wail over everything. The screams are on their own rhythm, the vocalist making his own way in the ruckus, and when he stops a minor-key post-rock fanfare comes in and gives way to an audio clip of a woman discussing her husband coming down with multiple sclerosis, describing his physical decline over 4 years, and the clip ends as you hear her throat catch and the tears creep into her voice. Then the screams return, I’ll be your eyes, I’ll be your eyes. The song spends itself shortly after, dying down to simple guitar figures and insistent drums.
Kyle Durfey is the vocalist for PBTT, that woman was his mother, and it was his father she was talking about. The Lack Long After, then, is written about his father’s death. It is a concept album, cohesive and roughly chronological. It is so raw and so good. I know that most people don’t like to listen to music with screamed vocals, I know most people don’t want to hear about physical decline and grief and death, and I still want so much for people to hear this album.
If you are someone that can’t really handle screaming, then I recommend starting at the end, the final track of the album, “I’ll Get By”.
The vocals aren’t clean throughout, but even when he’s pushing things there is less fry and grit in them than the other songs, so it’s not that screamy. The song is slow-paced, starting with a martial snare and some post-rocky guitars before the vocals come in. They are the focus of this song in a way that isn’t always true of PBTT, and it’s hard to avoid the heartbreak in his voice and his words. Early on I’m always struck by
And I'm still singing, and you still can't stay
You "loved life," and those words have lasted
I just wish I would have had ears for more than what you said
Because I still feel the lack long after
but the gut punch for me is later:
It seems we all get sick
We all die
in some no-name hospital with the same colored walls
And I guess that's fine
Musically it’s a well-done emo ballad, but that’s almost incidental to the grief at the core. At the very end, you hear that same woman’s voice from “Cripples Can’t Shiver”, this time on the phone: “I hope you know how much he loved you, and I think you do.”
On the other hand, if you want a good introduction to the album, the one that will give you the best idea of what else is in store, it is (happily enough) the first track, “I’ll Be Damned”.
Some minor-key strumming sets the scene and then guitars, drums, screams all come in to bring the energy level up high. But the song doesn’t stay there, instead rapidly going through multiple different tempos and arrangements. This is one of the most post-rock-inspired elements of their work; rather than verse-chorus-verse structure PBTT works its way through movements. In this song the overall arc is towards slower tempos and more atmospheric guitars, climaxing with a mostly drums and screams interlude:
You had to fade away, you had to leave
I'm pleading for one more time with what I know now
And I'm begging for the same flake to fall twice for the first time
I'm begging for what wasn't said
I think it’s natural to not really understand “why screaming”, and I think there are many different ways screaming can function in music, but this is a song that would be difficult to replicate the emotion of any other way. Here is a man begging for his father’s life, petitioning God for another chance, and that is not a pretty sight, it is not beautiful, it is not technically accomplished, it is raw and it is sad and it is not contained. Any other delivery works against that, makes it less honest, obfuscates what is happening.
I could go on for quite some time. Every song is at such a high emotional pitch, every scream so deeply felt, the guitars and the drums so desperate. Paradoxically enough the centerpiece of the album is the main exception to this overall feel: “Liquid Courage” is a sparse, almost meditative track, and I have to talk about it. Isolated drum hits start things off, similar to “Cripples Can’t Shiver” actually. But whereas that song had the bass kick in and bring the tempo up, that moment never comes here. Instead, we just get occasional guitar chords and then after almost 2 minutes some vocals, low in the mix, clipped phrases stopping almost as soon as they start:
On the day you died
I cut my hair for the funeralAnd on memorial day
I started drinking
Because it got kind of hard just sitting there thinkingabout Mom
alone in the house
At this point the rest of the band comes in, and after some more lyrics along those lines the guitars build in that classic post-rock crescendo style, but the climax doesn’t come; instead that wave crests in the next song. How could you have any resolution in a song like this?
I’m not an expert on the emo scene, so take the next bit with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that this album kicked off a wave of other, similarly emotionally raw albums about death. (It’s difficult to say as something of an outsider, because of course in general the emo scene is all about being emotionally raw.) The most obvious descendent is Stage Four, by Touché Amoré, a screamo album about the singer’s mom dying of cancer. PBTT and Touché Amoré did a split after The Lack Long After and before Stage Four, so it seems easy to assign influence. I’d also group Home, Like Noplace is There by The Hotelier and You’re Not as ____ as You Think by Sorority Noise in there, though those are both more firmly emo (not much screaming there). Of those, I’d say The Hotelier album is also tremendous, and the song “No Halo” by Sorority Noise is very good, but the rest isn’t even in the general vicinity of The Lack Long After.
PBTT appear to have exhausted something inside themselves after this album. One can’t grieve forever. Their two albums since are straightforwardly emo, all clean vocals, with something of a warble in there. Seems fine but not really my thing. Maybe I should give them another listen.
My dad is having some health issues lately, and in some ways the symptoms are very MS-like (though it’s not that, they’ve tested that, they’ve done so many tests), and I realized I may not be able to listen to this album relatively soon. I do find myself choking up a little bit on certain lines right now, so if things go poorly… Not sharing this album would not be my first concern, but I do love it, and I want so much for other people to give it a shot, and I know I won’t be able to bring that energy for it for some time. So I might as well do it now.