New Music / Freshly Written and Recently Released
The Silence Kit is a post-punk band from Philly / NJ. Headed by Pat McCay, the band is known for its explorations of some darker corners of the human psyche, places where other bands dare not go. They take a look at unfulfillment, alienation, and places where all hope is lost. The band came out with a brilliant new album a few months ago, titled "It's Not Too Late".
EQUAL STANDING
The most dramatic innovation of the new album over their previous ones lies with the instrumentals. "It's Not Too Late" boasts fuller-sounding instrumentals with more complex arrangements. And the instrumentals don't shy away from taking center stage with generally longer intros than we saw in earlier albums. Entering lyrics will just have to wait their turn. For example, the intro in "Captured Light" (Track 9) lasts until 1:09 on the clock, and the intro for "Hope Isn't Helping" (Track 4) lasts a full 1:58!
The band's previous release was the 2021 remastering of their album "In Regulated Measure". The band's most recent album of new music was 2018's "Fall Proection". While that remastering showed some interesting new textures and "nuance", and the 2018 album brought in some fuller instrumentals and faster tempos, "It's Not Too Late" goes way beyond nuance to bring us dramatically different stylings, from the smooth "Losing Sight" (Track 3) to the raucous "Vacancy Chain" (Track 11). In all of the songs the strength of the instrumentals is on an equal footing with the vocals. The range of the instrumentals and the complexity of the arrangements themselves largely bolster the album's diversity.
FINDING TRUE SELF
A continuing theme in The Silence Kit's music is the disconnect one has from their true self. The anguish that characters feel stems from living life with a certain emptiness, because living the way they do is too often just going through the motions and not rooted in one's connection to their true self.
Moving away from a little of the optimism in "Fall Protection", "It's Not Too Late" thematically continues where we left off in the seventh track of "In Regulated Measure". In that seventh track, "Trying Not To", the main character sings "You introduced me to myself; I lost him a long long time ago".
In the current album, "Let Me Dream" (Track 1) continues the theme. It references "lost myself", "burying the old me" and "recognize the real me".
And in "Losing Sight", the main character is observing someone else and is asking "Have you lost yourself?", but does it resonate with the other person who says that everything is all right? Here is "Losing Sight", very smooth in vocals, but strong in instrumentals. It's the third track on the album. The instrumentals on this are my favorite of the album:
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If only all the noise can be cleared away and we can again recognize the true self, then life will be more fulfilling.
TURNING OUTWARD
Sometimes this disconnect can be a realization we make ourselves, or sometimes it can be something that another points out to us, as in "Trying Not To". A lot of the characters in The Silence Kit's music are deeply introspective and are maybe thinking passively about their own situations. But the second noticeable change in this album over the previous ones is the turning outward with a critical eye. While the character in "Losing Sight", is turning outward in an agreeable way while asking someone else, "Are you losing sight?", the characters in some of the songs after that become more critical and even aggressive.
In "Emphasis Flag" (Track 10) the main character is critical of an (unnamed) person for showing a fraudulent or self-important representation of their true self. We don't know who that person is or if there's a relationship there. In "Nonsense" (Track 6) the character gives a piercing critique to another person "I don’t care what you think.” … “I don’t care about your opinions.” ... “I stay away when you’re around.”
The instrumentals in this album are a change of feel from "In Regulated Measure", which were starker and maybe contributed more to the main character's feeling of isolation and abandonment. The instrumentals in this album (which are brilliant) carry with them some of the signature darkness, but are also strong and confident enough, that, no matter how agitated and alarmed the words are, counter some of that desperation to reassure us that all may not be lost, that "It's Not Too Late".
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To hear the whole album and check out the songs mentioned above, here is the click to the band's Bandcamp page: The Silence Kit on Bandcamp (CLICK HERE). There you can also find links to the band's other albums.
The Silence Kit doesn't have any shows coming up in the next few weeks, but here is the click to their Facebook page where you can keep up with what they're doing ::: The Silence Kit on Facebook (CLICK HERE).
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