The Promise Ring - Wood/Water
At the beginning of this year, in the dying winter month of February, I re-discovered a whole movement of music that had inadvertently changed my life when I was a teenager. The bands that first turned me on to punk music - New Found Glory, Get Up Kids, and Blink 182 - were the wave of punk bands following a largely underground emo/punk scene all over Suburban America. Bad scenes and basement shows. Somehow Wisconsin band Promise Ring came out of it to record one of the defining albums of the movement in 1997 - "Nothing Feels Good" - whose title is surprisingly a play on words, suggesting a positive connotation on the album. Its roughly recorded, emotional punk songs largely about relationship woes, proved an underground success and captured the hearts of teenagers anywhere near indie/punk music.
In a tragic turn a few years later, after their largely underwhelming follow-up, "Very Emergency," singer Davey Von Bohlen was diagnosed with a brain tumour and had to undergo surgery. This unsurprisingly changed the course of the band, and entirely shook up his songwriting. A few years later this resulted in an album that seemingly polarises every single person who's ever heard it. Produced by Stephen Street, which seems apt considering the melancholy songs and his history with the Smiths, the album produced totally unexpected results, and a curveball that would prove difficult for older fans to embrace.
"Wood/Water" happens to be one of my favourite discoveries in recent years. It wreaks of waning passion - a thoughtful, yet apathetic throwback to the singer's experiences in life. It is reminiscent of a moment where you are totally unsure of where you are or where you are going. His lamentations in "Stop Playing Guitar" concern his decision to keeping write songs, and him entertaining thoughts of quitting for good. It is a definite highlight, though void of a lyrical chorus, and seems to sum up his conflicted nature. "No more guitar songs, it's just nervous energy" being a standout quote from another track. Despite this, you can tell he's not going to quit - it's an expression of confusion, apathy and reminiscent of a mid-twenties crisis - and you get the feeling he knows this. On "Suffer Never," he acknowledges the worldview and mature, possibly enriched life that suffering has given him, and says that "Without it, we're not sure if we're feeling good."
The album moves at a snails pace, with lush, yet subdued melodies, and is so persistently downbeat that you wonder whether they cared at all about the listener. Though out of this comes, I'll argue, greatness. It's an honest record, and like every great collection of songs, has a singular sound and vision, which I believe is fully realised. After all the angst, passion and whining about girls (ha), they seem to have, rather logically, burned out and settled down into calm and apathy. This is captured on tape across the album, and to be honest, it's is the best way for the Promise Ring to go out - wrapping up their highly energetic, driven adolescence and early adulthood with a mild, calmed, wistful spirit, and is a testament to the growth of their band and their diversity and skill in songwriting.
Recommended: Stop Playing Guitar, Suffer Never, and Say Goodbye Good.
