Reason in Decline

Album review

Anger is not wasted on the young, and in '90s North Carolina, it made compelling material for the indie punk likes of Polvo, Superchunk and Archers of Loaf. Now nearly three decades since the Archers' debut album Icky Mettle (and 24 years removed from their last), the quartet's creative engine Eric Bachmann found all that angst limiting: "I had to imagine I was this angry white curmudgeon college guy who hates capitalism and consumerism and has a broken heart … that guy eventually went away." So far away in fact that in Reason in Decline's sleekest tune, "Saturation and Light," Bachmann goes so far as to counsel against anger and eventually suicide, "Running out low hanging to dry/ As you try try try try try try/ While the whole world passes you by." 

The other major change for the better here is clear: well-recorded, beautifully mixed sound—the antithesis of this band's fuck you credo. Recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, North Caroline, Reason in Decline was produced by the band and Adam McDaniel, and engineered, mixed and co-produced by Alex Farrar. The album's ringing, distinct guitars are particularly striking. The lyrics, now written down, are easily some of Bachmann's best. In a welcome transition that mirrors what their heroes The Replacements went through in the late 1980s, the Archers have become … gulp, adults! Never fear, however. The pounding, fast-paced "Screaming Undercover" is a satisfying blast, and proof that Bachmann is still not content with the universal status quo, "Senator, sycophant, CEO/ Cunning in the back room/ Banking the roll." 

The waste and panic of war, another of his longtime subjects, inhabits the sweetly titled "Mama Was a War Profiteer," which closes with "No way out/ In the Golden hour/ (Daddy was a sad bell ringing)."  With recent throat surgery a success, Bachmann sings as well as he ever has on the ballad "Aimee." And despite its clamorous title, the triumphal "In the Surface Noise," which plays like a latter day "Thunder Road," is a sweeping modern rock track in the best sense of the word, one where glints of hope fleck among warnings to "teenage infidels" that "isolation won't keep you safe for long." An astonishing and unexpected return not to their raucous past but a more focused future, Reason In Decline is extraordinary with just enough remaining thunder and snarl. © Robert Baird/Qobuz