Every passionate music fan has an album, or albums, that are important to them. A connection of grief, confusion, anger, and despair. Because this album released months after my grandmother’s passing, I now share a connection with Jeremy Bolm (and countless others). Inside its lyrics and music are bookmarks and notes jotted only where your mind and heart can see and feel them-one of those albums that helps you move forward from dark times, or provides audio snapshots of better ones. It’s one of those albums that becomes a sonic placeholder in your life that you can always come back to. That may seem selfish, but Stage Four is one of those albums that serendipitously releases just when you need it. As much as Stage Four is a tribute and memorial of Jeremy Bolm’s mother, my review will be a tribute and memorial for my grandmother. Sorry for the mournful intro, but you’ll get more sentiments like that throughout this article. Stage Four’s album art We’ll find connections through extensions to not feel so alone And now, thanks to Touché Amoré’s new record Stage Four, I’m thinking about her more than usual and processing feelings left unchecked. In the months since her passing, there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think of her. She was halfway calling us on our bullshit and halfway telling us we could do whatever we wanted as long as we tried hard enough. My personal favorite quote from her was, “Can’t never did do nothin’.” She’d use that when my cousins and I would tell her we couldn’t do something. My grandma helped raise me when my parents split up. I did board that plane and I did see her one last time, but it was not in the way I’d hoped. I was asleep on the other side of the country, hoping to board a plane that morning to see her for the last time. Cancer took her early one morning as she slept. And with Stage Four, Touché Amoré has unmistakably made the biggest, boldest, and most artistic statement of their career.Earlier this year my grandmother, Hettie Viola Armentrout, passed away. Cathartic in delivery, highly sentimental, and sonically triumphant, Stage Four is an emblem of a band both living its dream and marred by loss. Stage Four was recorded in early 2016 in Studio City, CA with producer Brad Wood. So when the time came to write Stage Four there was no question that it would be about passing of Bolm’s mother in late 2014. Touché albums have always served as an emotional outlet for Bolm. “I don’t open up to people too much in regular life, but when I’m writing songs, I want to be as open and as honest as possible,” Bolm confesses. Having earned early cred, critical favor, and legions of fans by playing lengthy tours of all shapes and sizes-in every basement, youth center, and house show-the band enjoyed a bigger following which only grew along with their talents. Touché Amoré crossed into new territory with the 2013 art-punk masterpiece Is Survived By. Over the years the band rose to prominence with 2009’s …To the Beat of a Dead Horse and 2011’s Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me. And now with Stage Four, their fourth and biggest album to date, they are cementing their status as one of rock music’s most talented, relatable, and visceral acts. Since those early days, lead singer Jeremy Bolm, guitarists Nick Steinhardt and Clayton Stevens, bassist Tyler Kirby, and drummer Elliot Babin have created a trajectory for themselves through hard work and dedication. Stage Four, the new album from Los Angeles artful indie post hardcore band Touché Amoré, is available now.įormed in Burbank, California, across 20, the band’s urgent sound, with its melodic sonic assault and impassioned vocals, has grown tighter and more refined through a trio of full-length albums and a series of EP’s and releases.
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