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Track Listing:
01. bloodline
02. road
03. far
04. streamline
05. airport
06. savior
07. clearview
08. enough
09. relight
10. adapt
11. scramble suit
12. passenger
Life is often full of disappointment, but what happens when we actually get what we want? By 2018, Shannon Taylor’s life had changed entirely. Her band, awakebutstillinbed, had found critical acclaim and a fanbase who deeply connected with their debut, the relentless outpouring of what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way others see you. It was everything Taylor had wanted. But as the band dove headlong into touring—stringing together 4 full US tours in just 2 years—a strange thing began to happen. Despite the recent successes, a familiar feeling began gnawing away at her.
“If you’re the kind of person who only ever wanted to play music and you finally get that goal, but then all of a sudden you’re not happy, it’s a very rude awakening,” Taylor says.
Faced with this rude awakening, she did the only thing that made sense: she took to penning the band’s follow-up. The Bay Area emo band return with chaos takes the wheel and i am a passenger, on Tiny Engines, their first new full-length in five years. From the very first moment, with its warm, opening guitar strum, absib pick up exactly where they left us at the end of what people call low self-esteem. Still an open book, Taylor confesses, with a laugh, that “the album format, for me, is basically like my diary—not to be too emo about it.” This explains the lengthy pause between the band’s first LP and now. With the album revolving conceptually around Taylor’s reaction to touring life, writing more or less stopped during the pandemic. Once the touring picked back up in 2021, so too did the inspiration.
Produced by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball) and engineered by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Jeff Rosenstock, Deaf Heaven), chaos takes the wheel is sonically massive, allowing the band to peak higher and swoop to more intimate depths than ever before, as on the eight and a half minute epic “road.” “[Reinhart and Shirley] bounced off each other in a really cool way,” Taylor says. As a band, absib likewise play off each other’s strengths, consisting of Taylor on vocals and guitar, Brendan Gibson on guitar and keys, Alex Botkin on bass, and Erik Lobo on drums. At just under an hour chaos takes the wheel is a very giving album, unsparing in its intricately detailed interior spaces. “If we drive far enough will our lives not fall apart?” Taylor wonders as she and the band travel deeper into the American night on ‘far.’ Hedonic uncertainty haunts these moments, like the final lines of ‘road,’ when she reminds herself: “i used to feel so trapped inside all the walls of my home / i used to get lonely now i'm never alone / this is what i want.” Musically, chaos takes the wheel greatly expands the band’s sound, pushing their self-described “extremo” towards all manner of extremity at once.“It’s the most extreme version of us so far,” Taylor says. Take, for example, dual lead singles, “airport” and “redlight.” On “airport,” absib lean fully into their poppiest sensibilities, a huge slab of mid-tempo catharsis which finds Taylor reflecting “if you don't know how to fix me by now, will you ever?” By the time it reaches its outro, ‘airport’ has become nearly exorcismic in its release of past traumas. “redlight,” meanwhile, finds the band fully embracing screamo in a way that would please even genre purists—an effect aided by visceral guest vocals from For Your Health’s Hayden Rodriguez.
By the album’s end, we’ve traveled countless miles with awakebutstillinbed, through tender moments and turmoil alike. The road isn’t always easy, but it’s the only path ahead. Wherever home was, it’s far behind now. But by the time we reach the album closer ‘passenger,’ one thing is clear: wherever they end up next, absib will be there still raw, still vulnerable.
(bio by Mike Huguenor)
