The Revenant Composer

Track Listing:

1. Sleep Tonight
2. All of You
3. The Vanishing Game
4. Pathways
5. Whisper
6. Wish
7. Faces
8. Cruel Love

Canadian goth rock outfit The Birthday Massacre have had a fairly consistent and steady output since their debut album Nothing and Nowhere in 2002, and their latest release, Pathways, continues their trend of dark, synth-laden heaviness. Their 2007 album Walking with Strangers was probably their breakthrough, charting at 37 in the US indie charts, and in my personal opinion, 2010’s follow-up Pins and Needles remains their best album to date.

Their past few albums, I feel, have slightly missed the mark when compared to the enjoyably catchy hooks of earlier songs like ‘Walking with Strangers’ and ‘Shallow Grave’, and it’s no different here with Pathways; each song shows promise, but doesn’t seem to quite live up to the full potential it could have offered.

Pathways opens with the surprisingly heavy ‘Sleep Tonight’, which was also the first single released prior to the album’s full release earlier this week. Chugging guitars and reverb-drenched drums provide a pounding intro, before dropping out to make room for Sara Taylor’s typically haunting vocals. The opening verse is promising, though not inherently catchy in itself, and when the chorus arrives the guitars give way to sustained power chords under a reasonable vocal hook, but something nonetheless feels lacking in delivery; essentially a descending D minor scale, it falls short of memorability. The middle eight brings interesting guitar rhythms, before returning to the chorus and outro, and at its conclusion, I’m left with a sense of a satisfying song that I can’t quite remember.

The second track, ‘All of You’, is similar; strong verse, and slightly less-than-memorable chorus. I find this is perfectly acceptable for track two, which is typically not the lead track from the album anyway, and certainly not every song can be the stand-out single; it doesn’t fall into the category of ‘filler’ by any means, and serves its function on the album well.

Then comes ‘The Vanishing Game’, which I have a real problem with. A mid-tempo song is an interesting choice for track three, where I would normally suggest the album should start picking up pace, but that’s not the issue I found. It’s actually a perfectly good track, with a good verse and a great chorus, but at the very end of the chorus’ vocal line, compositionally I want it to do something completely different. The line goes up from a G sharp to B which is a great rising motif, but then falls back to G sharp, which with the underlying harmony of a E major chord – unexpected, with the previous E minor key we’d been in – is entirely unsatisfying. It’s beyond deceptive, because the ear wants the line to rise to a high E, and every single time I hear the song I keep expecting to hear a note that never arrives. This high motif is repeated multiple times throughout the song, and each time it fails to deliver.

Then comes the title track, which opens with a firmly head-bopping drum rhythm, and has an absolutely fascinating and exciting hi-hat motif that comes out of left field and truly makes the song. But then … we never really hear it again! I think it comes back a couple of times under the verse, but it’s such a standout moment that I feel it deserves its own solo moment – even if it were just during the middle eight. Then, the biggest disappointment of what should have been a truly great track: the chorus drops to half time, slowing the whole pace of the song to a crawl and pulling the driving momentum out from under you, right when it should have risen to a towering pinnacle of rhythm and harmony. On top of that, the chorus lasts exactly four measures – far, far too short – before jumping back in to the double time tempo for a brief bridge back to the verse. In my opinion, this really weakens what could – and should – have been the strongest track of the album.

‘Whisper’ is interesting enough, especially with Taylor’s unexpected guttural screams in the post-chorus, and functions well as a fifth-track break from what should have been four opening tracks of catchiness; slow-tempo, ballad-ish, a perfect mid-album moment of respite. Except … there are only three tracks to follow, which is another criticism I have of the album as a whole; it’s really far too short, with only eight tracks and a runtime of just 33 minutes, making it their shortest album to date. ‘Whisper’ comes off certainly as the darkest track of the album, and ironically for a slower song stands out as one of the more memorable bits of the album.

‘Wish’ is actually really good, and I have little criticism to levy at it; a strong opening verse, and a great chorus with heavy emphasis on off-beat accents, both contribute to what is probably the best track on the album. Of all the songs on the album, this one stays with me longest, which is somewhat ironic as I imagine it was probably intended as a deep cut. The only thing I would have changed is actually the title itself; the chorus has excellent lyrics:

Magic
Is anybody out there?
Magic
I’m wishing on star tonight
Magic
Can anybody see through
Tragic eyes

I would have probably called the song ‘Tragic Eyes’; it feels more unique, and highlights the chorus in a way that to me would have felt just a little more special; “wishing on a star tonight” feels much more generic.

The penultimate track, ‘Faces’, is another slow ballad, but with slightly less interest than ‘Whisper’ (which was only two tracks ago – two slow tracks so close to each other somewhat kills the momentum of the album’s back half). There’s a good moment post-chorus in the guitars with a sudden chromatic line, making use of the tritone and flattened second of D minor, which serves as a good contrast to the otherwise very melodic motifs of the verse and chorus, but otherwise ‘Faces’ fades into the background of the album relatively quickly.

Then, all of a sudden, we’re at the last track; it’s as if two or three additional songs were just cut from the album, and we’re into a closing quiet song – ‘Cruel Love’. The song itself is solid, and serves well as the album’s closer; emotional, strong chorus chord progressions and vocal harmonies bring out a sense of nostalgia, and honestly this is probably the second best overall track after ‘Wish’; it’s just to quick to come, and the album ends up feeling just a little unfinished.

Overall, Pathways isn’t The Birthday Massacre’s worst album by a long way, but it falls significantly short of their earlier masterpieces like Pins and Needles. Six out of ten would recommend.