Post-hardcore veterans Dance Gavin Dance released their sixth studio album, Instant Gratification, on Tuesday, April 14 via Rise Records. This album marks the second release featuring current clean vocalist Tilian Pearson and the fifth to include long-time unclean vocalist Jon Mess.
Since the group’s inception in 2005, the band has dealt with a myriad of lineup changes that would have collapsed any other band. Fortunately, the two core members, lead guitarist Will Swan and drummer Matthew Mingus, have held the band together in the face of personnel conflicts. Each album maintains the group’s signature style that showcases Swan and Mingus’s intricate musicianship while drawing from a diverse pool of influences and experimenting with many different musical styles.
The band rose to widespread popularity with their first studio album, Downtown Battle Mountain, in 2007. The record featured original clean vocalist Jonny Craig, whom has now gone on to record with multiple bands and artists. Following Craig’s departure, the group continued on with clean vocalist Kurt Travis. After Travis joined, screamer Jon Mess quit the band before the release of their 2008 self-titled album. Dance Gavin Dance recorded one more album with Travis, 2009’s Happiness, before inviting both Craig and Mess to rejoin for 2011’s Downtown Battle Mountain II.
In 2012, the group announced Craig’s second departure from the band, citing conflicts between Craig and Sumerian Records as the reason. As changing vocalists proved to be nothing new for the group, Dance Gavin Dance recruited singer-for-hire Tilian Pearson, who had previously worked with other notable acts like Tides of Man, Saosin, and Emarosa. With Pearson, the band recorded and released an album titled Acceptance Speech in 2013. As it seems each clean vocalist has served on at least two of Dance Gavin Dance’s studio albums, Instant Gratification marks Pearson’s second venture, and hopefully there will be more following this one.
Instant Gratification begins with “We Own the Night,” a track that starts off with Pearson’s voice soaring over a gentle chord progression before Mess’s familiar screams join in about thirty seconds in alongside Mingus and bassist Tim Feerick. Here, the song’s standout moments are when Pearson’s smooth vocals mesh with the drums’ dance beats and show Pearson truly coming into his own as Dance Gavin Dance’s front man.
The album continues with the single “Stroke God, Millionaire,” followed by a track called “Something New.” In “Something New,” Pearson takes command for the majority of the song. Here, Pearson’s parts are sung over R&B-influenced guitar works that transition into more aggressive sections where Mess assumes the lead vocals. “Something New” bears a sound that stands out as one of the more eclectic tracks in the bunch.
The next track, “On the Run,” was the first single released by the band to promote the album. This song follows a more traditional formula seen in many other songs of the genre: heavy verses with poppy choruses. This song was the appropriate choice for Dance Gavin Dance to release as their promotional single, as it sounds familiar to tracks on Acceptance Speech and features Mess’s signature lyrical style. Mess’s bizarre and nonsensical lyrics have become a favorite fixture for fans over the years, and Pearson’s pop-oriented vocals mesh seamlessly on this track.
“Awkward,” the album’s sixth track, has Pearson at the forefront for the majority song, with only about a minute of the song featuring Mess’s screaming. The lyrics are satirical look at what it means for one to be awkward sung over clean guitars before the song suddenly shifts dynamic and transitions to a heavier portion where Mess briefly interrupts with more bizarre lyrics. While the song sounds like one of the less-structured songs on the album, its lyrics are some of the more entertaining on the release.
Track nine, “Eagle vs. Crows,” treats listeners to a rare instance featuring guitarist Will Swan’s rapping. Swan has rapped on a few tracks on previous albums, such as “Powder to the People” from Happiness, “Heat Seeking Ghost of Sex” off of Downtown Battle Mountain II, and “Acceptance Speech” from the album of the same name. However, this time around, “Eagle vs. Crows” is the first to have Swan’s rapping throughout the entirety of the song. Here, clean vocals, screaming vocals, and rapping all blend together over an R&B musical arrangement that creates an intriguing dynamic that keeps audiences guessing as to what comes next with each passing second.
While Dance Gavin Dance is known to have songs that are part of a series, Instant Gratification only contains one track that follows this tradition: “Death of a Strawberry.” “Strawbery Swisher” parts one and two were recorded with Travis on Happniess and part three was the leading single off Acceptance Speech, featuring Pearson. While the third “Strawberry Swisher” on the previous album had a mix of screaming and singing, “Death of a Strawberry” returns to the style heard in the first two entries in the “Strawberry Swisher” series. Pearson sings ninety percent of the track with a little participation from Mess at the song’s middle. This song takes listeners through a roller coaster of jazzy verses and poppy, catchy choruses that could charm even those who oppose listening to songs with screaming vocals. Out of all the tracks on Instant Gratification, “Death of a Strawberry” deserves to be made the next single.
On a five-point scale, this album receives four-and-a-half points. The missing half-point comes from a few instances where tracks on the album break the new R&B-influenced direction that Swan has taken with songwriting. Fortunately, for Dance Gavin Dance, the future looks ever brighter if they continue to explore the style they’ve cultivated in writing Instant Gratification.
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