“New Jersey ain’t the whole world.” These are clearly the words of someone who never called it "home". It may not be the whole world, but for many of its artists, it’s a universe, one where you can spend an entire career creating rewarding art. Real Estate, Titus Andronicus, and Lifetime are all considered quintessentially “suburban,” and they are nothing alike—and the same goes for Garden State and the movies of Todd Solondz. Bruce Springsteen and “The Sopranos” are revered for their realistic works of fiction, Bon Jovi and "Jersey Shore" less so for their fictional works of "reality"; a fine line exists between archetype and stereotype. Its economy and geography is every bit as contradictory and complex—New Jersey’s wealthiest pockets are stuffed with families fleeing New York City and Philadelphia, while its own metropolises are some of America’s most notoriously blighted. It’s named the Garden State for good reason, while its beaches are a punchline for pollution. The state represents American sprawl and dichotomy crammed into a manageable space—the perfect map for Cymbals Eat Guitars to project LOSE, a sprawling, complex, and fascinating document of American indie rock.
It’s a fitting occurrence, though still surprising. Most bands rep Jersey from the start; in 2009, Cymbals Eat Guitars briefly identified as an NYC band, though their music existed on MySpace and encompassed the Pacific Northwest, drawing heavily on Built to Spill and Modest Mouse. By 2011’s Lenses Alien, they settled in the pop culture void of Staten Island, while the album seemed to take place entirely within Joseph D’Agostino’s head. An often compelling record, D’Agostino has since admitted that it makes more sense if you’re high, but also that its unwieldy songs are almost impossible to play if you’ve had more than two beers.
So LOSE is a homecoming in multiple ways—D’Agostino looks back on his upbringing and New Jersey’s vast catalog of pop culture folklore while the band makes the occasional anthemic moments that elevated Why There Are Mountains the primary purpose of each song. The near-replication of its length and chord progression casts “Jackson” and a sequel to Mountains’ massive opener “...And the Hazy Sea.” However, where the latter exploded on impact and played only on the vertiginous disparity between its volcanic eruptions and minutes of calm, “Jackson” evenly and expertly delivers its peaks in a variety of ways —D’Agostino patiently works towards an arcing chorus worthy of its Elliott Smith influence, while a triumphant guitar solo emerges from the kind of post-rock blur that would typically signal the closure of a Cymbals Eat Guitars song. The riff from “Warning” adds a couple of sour, flatted notes to the jangly progression from “Shore Points,” which soundtracked a leisurely drive down the coast on Lenses Alien. In a thrilling sprint towards a brash chorus, “Warning” recklessly slams on the gas without checking the brakes.
Cymbals Eat Guitars aren’t the same band that made Why There Are Mountains. In fact, they’re an actual band now, rather than a cast of supporting players beholden to D'Agostino's ideas. The Lenses Alien lineup returns with a new drummer (Andrew Dole) and a new rhythmic drive; producer John Agnello lends presence and texture, rendering these topographic songs 3D, while the rhythm section acts as D’Agostino’s OnStar—he’s still free to wander wherever, yet there’s a framework and a destination. When he hits on a tangent, he’s given direction an ultimate resolution, so Cymbals Eat Guitars have the confidence to strike out to stranger territories. “Laramie” manages to span the lonesome crowded west and Muscle Shoals soul before levitating to an astral, pedal-stomping freakout. “Chambers” and “Lifenet” are slices of Staten Island living delivered as slick, heartland radio rock. It's all presented with unity rather than erratic dilettantism; "indie rock" is Cymbals Eat Guitars' domain and they cover its entirety.
And yet, the music is once again outdone by D’Agostino’s lyrics, deeply personal and relatable, referential without being academic, prone to poetic flight and realistic grounding. Lyric writing in rock music—or, really, any genre—rarely possesses the substance and depth displayed on LOSE. During an aborted drug deal in “Chambers”, Wu-Tang Clan get an offhand shout, and Shaolin’s finest would envy the spiced-out, scene-setting vividness given to “Warning”—“Pennants stiffen on the strip/ Wind is whipping through the tinsel fixed to the dealership/And you're looking mighty ghostly just like Bowie on Soul Train/ Wrapped in your sable.”
RZA would also approve of D’Agostino’s writing regimen, which uses a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals as a muse and meditation as a mental exercise. As a result, LOSE fixates on small moments of startling lucidity and figures out where they fit into the bigger picture. During bookends “Jackson” and “2 Hip Soul (Floyd’s Tomb)”, New Jersey’s more obscure, shameful race relations come to the fore—the former evokes a possibly apocryphal band of Native American outlaws during a meditation on the afterlife, while “2 Hip Soul” lends a redneck’s comeuppance a mythical quality high school rumors tend to acquire. A classmate falls face-first into a firepit at a kegger, returning with a load of pills and a compression sleeve under his John Deere hat and Carhartts, potentially karmic retribution for his hobby of carving swastikas into trees and clubbing ostriches with PVC piping at the local zoo.
During “Chambers”, D’Agostino recalls his parents buying him a dog, the subsequent passing of which served in a retrospect as a way “To learn about loss/ The slow education.” His insight captures a different and devastating lesson about death on the stunning power ballad “Child Bride”. D’Agostino’s tender acoustic fingerpicking only serves to make his confessional memories all the more shocking—“You were my best friend/ Until your dad slapped the living shit out of you.” Its title serves as cruel foreshadowing for someone whose path was set as a youth by circumstances beyond his control; an alcoholic mother instigates a sudden relocation, the friend sells off all his possessions, moves south and catches D’Agostino at a show in Orlando with a new girlfriend and a crack addiction. He offers a hit and D’Agostino refuses, because “My heart would explode,” either from the drugs or just from the stark realization of how he and his friend ended up in the same place. The final chorus soars, while D’Agostino lies crushed, realizing he’s been given nothing but opportunity and support—and here he is, wasting his 20s getting high in less unflattering ways.
Yet, D’Agostino thoroughly understands how he and countless others get to this point, and it’s explored in its entirety during LOSE’s thesis statement, “XR”. It’s the song that most explicitly references the death of Benjamin High, D’Agostino’s closest friend and musical collaborator, and the inspiration for the newly introspective and self-disclosing lyrics. The awful coincidence of his last name is used as a sobering double entendre during a beer-raising coda—“High is just a tingling behind my eyes/ Got no serotonin left.” Before he gets to that point, “XR” wraps up an entire adolescence of escape into drugs and rock ‘n roll within 2:30 of rabble-rousing, harmonica-huffing cow-punk. D’Agostino barks through a distorted microphone, “Here I am again at Ben’s MySpace grave,” and traces back to how, at first, drugs are used to accompany incredible, fleeting moments of youth. Then, they become a means of trying to get that feeling back, as a trip to the record store results in buying CDs for “ripping rails, not listening to.” And finally, it becomes a way to push through the numbness of being unable to generate a substitute—“Wanna wake up wanting to listen to records/ But those old feelings elude me.”
Those feelings are most closely associated with the Wrens throughout *LOSE—*D’Agostino and High take a road trip to Philly for a house show and their van-ride duet of “I Guess We’re Done” (“I’ll do the Kev and you can do the Charles”) is recalled on “Laramie”. Cymbals Eat Guitars owe a lot to that band—they described them as “our Beatles”, and Charles Bissell produced Why There Are Mountains. In some ways, Cymbals Eat Guitars got to live the experience the Wrens related on “This Boy is Exhausted” and “Boys, You Won’t”—playing to empty rooms with a complete lack of buzz, taking up deadening day jobs after having blown their college years. They also learned that if you make a record at the level of The Meadowlands, you can foster a fanbase willing to wait over a decade for new music. So even if D’Agostino’s lyrics are rife with death, depression and doubt, LOSE exudes earned resilience, of getting through shit and getting your shit together. Since it's more clear than ever that the Wrens—and Built to Spill and Modest Mouse—aren't currently going to provide those feelings that currently elude listeners, Cymbals Eat Guitars have realized the challenge facing them all along; the result makes the distinction between protege and peer nearly indistinguishable.
