Make Do And Mend-Everything You Ever Loved
The so-called American post-hardcore 'Wave' has given us a handful of seriously killer albums over the past twelve months, all possessing their own individual feels and charms. Defeater's Empty Days And Sleepless Nights was a work of art, intricately crafting a multi-layered story to a versatile quality that is rarely heard in the modern day while Touche Amore created Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me, a record that while only just over twenty minutes in length felt every inch the devastating epic, and that's to only name two.
Make Do And Mend are perhaps the most traditional of these bands in their use of song structure but they're just as powerful as any. 2010's End Measured Mile was an eclectic debut of abrasive post-hardcore and searching soulful punk-rock and its successor elevates upon this possessing an urgent, demanding and above all real conviction and its strengths are many as a result.
Opener Blur is going to be a mighty contender for 2012's best opening track, its buildingly explosive and assured dynamics feel say like the Smashing Pumpkins at their best, not so much in sound but in that everything going on makes clear sense and the instruments contain as much emotion as the vocals, with frontman James Carroll's repeated scream of "you let it go!" hitting the heart in exactly the way intended before launching into a cluster of firework musicality, it's a tour de force of a song.
It's a hard act to follow but from here onwards the consistency is rife and every song feels as sincere as the last, each possessing its own mood. From the delicate and loving St. Anne in which Carroll expresses tribute to a figure who's "the patron saint of everything [he] lacks" to the darker Hide Away that puts deep self-uncertainties into words, "are you the saviour or the plague?". Final track Desert Lily is an affecting highlight in its introspective but ultimately hopeful confessions from Carroll that although "every day is just a promise that [he'll] break" he'll "take [his] debt to distance and earn [his] share of home", it feels like a journey from the frustrating inevitable regrets of the opening track to the certain and unforgotten promises made in the closing and gives the album an immersive framework.
Its qualities like these that make this a brilliant and emotionally evocative record that reveals that bit more on every listen. On the strength of this and the amount of times you'll come back to it, this is a band well worth paying attention to.