NEVER ENOUGH: A Glimpse into Turnstile's Future
ATIBA JEFFERSON
NOTE: THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF THE “NEVER ENOUGH” FILM, JUST THE STANDARD STUDIO ALBUM
The question "How do you follow up your most successful work to date?” doesn’t have a straightforward answer. Some will offer more of the same, like Clairo releasing Sling after Immunity. Some will pivot away from that work, such as Radiohead releasing Kid A after OK Computer.
In the case of Turnstile, the follow-up to their 2021 breakout Glow On is an inverse of what made that album special. The color scheme is predominantly a muted blue in contrast to the sharp pink of Glow On, many lyrical motifs pop back up but with a more dramatic presentation (such as “Birds” being a retread of “TLC” with an intro ripped straight out of Tyler the Creator’s Igor), and the production is the same but feels more full and forceful.
Glow On is going to come up a few times in this review, but this isn’t to say Never Enough is just more of that, because the differences are noticeable once you go beyond the surface. The quickest way I can think to sum it up is this: whereas Glow On was an alt-rock-y hardcore album, Never Enough is a hardcore-y alt-rock album. There are more sing-along choruses this time, and they allow the band to flex its knack for melody, as seen on the soaring “Sole” or the surreal “Light Design.” This approach proves to be effective, as after just a couple of listens, every single melody on this album was stuck in my head. The increased detail in the production is also evident, with the Police-inspired “I Care” being fleshed out with Jack Antonoff-style effects that whirl around the song throughout its runtime, and the aforementioned “Light Design” reading more like a psych-rock jam than a traditional Turnstile song.
The flow of the album plays out much more deliberately than any other Turnstile album up to this point, and with this being their first album to break over forty minutes, they had to pull from a wider array of influences to match the length of their ambitions. Most of the time, it works, as seen in the case of the seven-minute “Look Out for Me” evolving into a Baltimore club music homage. However, in the case of “Sunshower” being a great 90-second rager followed by two minutes of reverb-soaked flute on an unchanging ambient bed, it ultimately leaves the song feeling disjointed. Despite these kinks, from the opening title track to the closing ballad “Magic Man,” the band varies it up enough to keep the journey from getting too tiring.
That being said, while hardcore has proven to be a genre that can handle its albums being longer than 30 minutes, the actual examples of this are few and far between. Even with all of its experimentation, Never Enough does start to feel long around “Slowdive,” a song that, when paired with “Time is Happening,” provides the album’s lone lull. Thankfully, it’s an album that’s long but rarely redundant, as its lyrics are consistently evocative and it will whip you into a frenzy when it decides to throw down.
While I don’t believe this to be a perfect album or even the band’s best to this point, they set out to prove the bounds their sound could go, and in making Never Enough a continuation of Glow On rather than simply a second helping of it, they succeeded and have left me looking forward to what they do next.