Music does interesting things to our brain chemistry when it enters our auditory canals and bounces around unimpeded in our skulls. It can access long-forgotten memories, it can swing a mood toward darkness or light, it can move us to tears, it can energize us like a heart needle of adrenaline, enflaming our passions to indescribable heights, or it can calm us to a state of near-suspended animation, soothing us into a contemplative reverie.
Music can do all of these things by degrees and in various intensities, but it’s a rare feat for a single artist’s efforts to capture that entire panorama of shifting emotions and spiking consciousness. Improbably christened and therefore perfectly framed to accept the mantle, The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die may be that unlikely band to be nearly all things to nearly all people.
The Connecticut nine-piece (at present, for now) generally fits under the Emo umbrella, but it’s clear that there’s more going on here than just slashing guitars, engaging melodicism and mopey lyrics. On its two full-lengths, 2013’s Whenever, If Ever, and the just released Harmlessness, and a handful of EPs and singles, TWIABP endears itself with a carousel of musical touchstones. There are fleeting snatches of Nick Drake, Brian Eno, Polyphonic Spree, Smashing Pumpkins and The Shins, among other possibilities, in a dizzying array of genre permutations, including Chamber Pop, Emo, Post Rock, Pop Punk and Indie Rock. Given TWIABP’s broad dynamic spectrum, it’s easy to understand how it manages to snag so many disparate listeners.
TWIABP has been something of a revolving-door band since its formation in 2009, with members leaving and rejoining, or performing solely in the studio or on the road, with the single constant being bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Josh Cyr. It seems natural to assume, then, that it is his vision and scope that is represented in the band’s impossibly eclectic sound and fury. And yet all that really matters is that whoever shows up on this leg of TWIABP’s current tour will have an indelible impact like no other past, present or future iteration of the band. And there are the great dichotomies of The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die — the band plays with both great ferocity and exquisite delicacy, its consistent chaos acts in defiance of and is reinforced by its fractured history, and its rainbow of influences funnels into one of the most singularly unique sounds in music today.
