Turnstile are probably the most ambitious in a line of modern hardcore bands that are slowly achieving mainstream recognition. Breaking from the fabricated mold, the group embraced synthesisers and electronic experimentation for 2021’s breakthrough Glow On, and Never Enough comes with a 50-minute “visual experience” (or full-length music video), that can be watched in parts on YouTube. The artwork – a baby blue sky with twin rainbows – also picks up from Glow On‘s iconic baby-pink clouded sky (maybe that’s a reference to the obscure-but-viral Itsutsu no Akai Fusen album), suggesting a visual coherence the band might adopt from here on out.
But then, Never Enough came overshadowed with the departure of lead guitarist Brady Ebert, with rhythm guitarist Pat McCrory doing double duties (since, Meg Mills has joined the band on rhythm guitar, and is prominently in the visual album). It would be easy to over-analyse McCrory’s larger part in the writing process as the source of the album’s sound, but it seems evident that Turnstile already approached their fourth album with very clear intentions of crafting themselves a new identity.
Where Glow On already veered into post-punk experimentation, it was still an incredibly heavy album, dominated by the kinetic bursts of short hardcore songs. Never Enough does not abandon the visceral energy altogether, but it dives into a myriad of genres and atmospherics that the predecessor only hinted at. This leads to a genuinely inventive, interesting cross-section: there’s a few parallels here to Killing Joke, around the time of Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, the echoing arena pathos of Heroes del Silencio, and kids of the 80s might even glimpse leftovers of The Offspring, when they were still a good band. Other tracks are even more removed from punk: the short and soulful “Ceiling” could sit as an interlude on a Frank Ocean album, and closer “Magic Man” has the psychedelic halcyon glow of a Tame Impala track. And then there’s a host of additional guests, an elusive bunch that includes Dev Hynes, Hayley Williams, Faye Webster and A.G. Cook. This is anything but traditionalist.
It is this mixture of fast-paced punk with lengthy, almost ambient or drone adjacent keyboard sections that give the album a wholly unique feeling of nostalgia. Take the incredible “Sunshower”, an explosive hardcore track that just fades into echoes after 90 seconds to open up to a single keyboard tone, as a blissful flute expands across the cinematic vista, suggesting the blissful experience of being caught in summer rain, gazing across a pastoral hillside region. “Never Enough”, the opening track, seems almost like a mission statement in this regard, a sparkling alt-rock hymn, driven by a pristine guitar tone and the massive voice of vocalist Brendan Yates, bookended by beautiful synthesiser parts – it practically screams arena sound.
Let’s be clear: Never Enough is a summer album, a pop album, a generational moment of awakening for the teenage generation. Lyrically, Yates confronts loneliness, regret, isolation, addiction and anger – the ultimate mixture of adolescent emotion, but his perspective of this is marked by adult understanding of the repetitive cycles behind inner struggle, which often take a lifetime to untangle. A song like “Look Out For Me” is a perfect distillation of this, with its heavy riffs and shouted vocals, it seems the perfect teen statement – but then transforms, in its second part, into a quiet, neon-infused synth ballad, which expands into muffled breakbeats, a spoken word bit from Maestro Harrell and whistling.
The push-and-pull movement, which occurs throughout the record, suggests a balance of internal chaos that is met by external sensuality. It’s too cringe to call this “a musical hug”, but the effect of this duality is incredibly soothing. Maybe that impression is derived from the signature pop songs on the album, such as “Seein’ Stars” and “I Care”, which play with the gestalt of 80s new wave: elaborate rhythm parts, melodic and climactic guitar solos and plenty of painterly sonic experimentation. “Light Design” even adds a hint of gothic pathos to this – with its anthemic lead melody and gargantuan scale, it’s possibly the most brutalist song of the album.
The more cleanly defined hardcore songs are just as memorable and anthemic. “Dreaming” uses a horn section and off-beat to bring in some latin American texture, the pummeling “Sole” has a quasi-middle eastern core (coming out especially in its closing moments) and the explosive, sudden “Birds” demands stage-diving with its classic punk structure and heavy guitars. There’s also the wonderful buildup of the short “Dull”, which finally explodes into a mean, metallic refrain.
It’s an interesting bridge that the band manages to erect – making hardcore seem as glammed up and digestible as this might seem genuinely off-putting to the purists in the fanbase, as it poses questions of purpose and underdog status: is this still punk? But then the brilliance of punk, and especially the U.S. hardcore scene, has been in bringing joy to violent expression, to open channels that invent artistic expression of emotional aggression, turning concerts into moments of spiritual cleansing and social connection. Connecting that with a more melancholic, nostalgic, sensual need for harmony and bliss was suggested by the Millennial fun-punk groups that dominated the airwaves of the 90s and 2000s, but even at their most adolescent, they never dared venturing outside of adult oriented rock clichés. So, in a way, Turnstile almost have spiritually more in common with Garbage or Smashing Pumpkins, framing alternative rock as outsider pop – counter culture that finds the masses.
As immediate and iconic Never Enough feels, it has one tiny issue: it goes on for too long. In its final stretch, the album includes two minor tracks, which don’t add much to the flow and seem just unnecessary: the stoned “Slowdive”, which borrows Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” riff (not even the first or most inventive time this happens, hey hello Butthole Surfers and half a dozen other bands), is too plodding and “heavy metal” for the album’s own good – it just slows things down after the dynamic “Birds”. “Time is Happening” can’t really pick up from it, as it’s certainly the most standard 90s punk-rock track here – slightly melancholic, while also brandishing this almost militaristic pathos that’s familiar from that era, being all too brief and too self-assured to do anything that makes it memorable. Had these two songs been excluded, the record would feel even stronger and more cohesive, but it’s likely that the band was striving for a punchy section before the “Magic Man” closes the record on a sombre, quiet, wistful tone.
Still, I can’t imagine Never Enough being absent from any year-end-list. Similar to Tame Impala’s Lonerism, it generates a colourful, vibrant embodiment of climactic generational experience. It’s the record that kids will ask their parents to buy for them, and which parents will tell their kids about when it’s decades old. It’s the soundtrack of a summer; the music playing during first intimacies and turning 18. Anyone that isn’t old and cynical can embrace this sentiment, and maybe find a piece of themselves in this. And for all those who start right here: I’m glad this music changed your life – it’s really special… both the music, and your life.
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