31Knots newest album, Worried Well, came out in August via Polyvinyl. It's an awesome record, but I'm going to let the press release do the talking:In an era where underground rock morphed into indie rock and indie Rock has become the new platform for rock stars and flash-in-the-pan buzz bands, 31Knots is neither. This is, depending on your vantage point, a blessing or a curse. Have they been marginalized by writing songs too intense and impossible to pigeon-hole? Or are they a cult band that becomes more meaningful with each passing trend in which they refuse to play into? That they have stuck to their own creative trajectory is a testament to this fact. And yet the path for which they have cleared for themselves leaves a trail of all the great hallmarks a rock band should have. Worried Well leaves no doubt that their decisive quest has lead to a crowning jewel.
The album itself continues to confound and perplex any and all who hear it. The contradictions cut through 31Knots 6th full-length album with virulence, a razor slicing through modern culture. Behind secret walls and hidden compartments mirror images ask impossible-to-answer questions: Is that thundering sound overhead salvation or oblivion? Should you really ‘just do what they say’? What kind of place is this anyway?
Plainly stated, 31Knots has not moved in a new direction so much as they have ripened to full maturity, evolved into the creature they're meant to be. Previous efforts - Talk Like Blood (2005), Polemics (2006), The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere (2007) - are just as tightly wrapped, just as fierce and incendiary. But something is different. A devout fan can sense a noticeable return to the songwriting approach first displayed on their Curse Of The Longest Day EP (2004), which began their creative ambition to achieve a more fluid marriage of synthetic sterility and intelligent organic rock, unafraid to temper themselves with grooves that threaten to linger and moments that are built up to unfathomable heights. There are still ferocious starts and stops and tire-screech changes as songs defy all convention. There are still ominous loops of atmospheric hums and drones. There is still an admixture of anger, pomp, and theatricality as singer/guitarist Joe Haege shape-shifts between preacher, warlord, and sideshow barker. But something is different. Something here is new. It deserves to be called out as thought provoking and well written music in a time when substance is quickly giving way to music of commerce and palatability.Just as there is no easy ways to sum up the band itself, it is equally as difficult to pinpoint the emotions and message of their songs. There are no easy answers. In fact there may be no answers. One side says opaque, one side says all white. We are powerless in the sea of such a fragmented and fractioned world. Drowning in contradiction. Deaf to the sounds of ice sheets falling. Blind to the abstraction of death on a massive scale. Steeped in neurosis, memory and insecticide we are equal parts urgency, immediacy, fear, despair.
But let not such blackness scare you: 31Knots has long gravitated toward the darker underbelly of the modern era, but the darkness is tempered by seeing the songs live. The songs must be not merely heard, but experienced. Only then will you grasp that these songs are a conduit for Haege along with Jay Winebrenner's slithering bass, Jay Pellici's pounding insistent drums - to humanize the bleakness. Their live show is a constellation to navigate by. A positive to trump the negative. No one leaves the room unaffected. There is no band like 31Knots and Worried Well finds them at the full height of their powers.
31Knots - Certificate (from Worried Well)
31Knots - The Breaks (from Worried Well)
that picture is not 31 knots
Yikes, right you are. How embarrassing. Correct photo up now.