It's been two and a half years since the release of Emeralds' excellent Does It Look Like I'm Here?, and each member of the trio has stayed busy. Mark McGuire continued to spool out guitar ambience, culminating in the highlight-reel A Young Person's Guide to Mark McGuire. Steve Hauschildt crafted a solid solo record of synth patterns, and has another due soon. And John Elliott's Outer Space project put out two stellar albums this year, while his Editions Mego sub-imprint Spectrum Spools has been perhaps the most exciting underground label of 2012, supporting material by Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Drainolith, and Gary War.
Given all this activity, I expected the next proper Emeralds album to be filled with new ideas-- perhaps even overloaded with them. But Just to Feel Anything has the opposite problem. Smoothed and streamlined, it comes off as a retreat into the safety of genre. While there's nothing inherently wrong with Emeralds continuing to evoke the past, what made their earlier work so interesting was the way they tweaked and skewed influences in unpredictable ways. Hence they could breathe life into even the most hackneyed new age tropes.
Here, though, the soft shapes and cheesy tones of new age, post-rock, and even corporate music tend to subsume the band's personality. The result is well-executed and pleasant to listen to, but generally lacking edge or distinction. In places, it sounds like anyone could've made this, much the way music in TV commercials sounds crafted by a committee or an algorithm. Despite how reference-heavy their work has been, that's something I've never thought about any previous Emeralds-related release.
There are spots in the album's glossy haze where the band's originality pokes through. Generally this occurs when they eschew predictable beats. They nicely evoke the melancholy of mid-period Cure on the drifting "Through & Through", and offer dense layers in the drones of "The Loser Keeps America Clean". Strongest is eight-minute closer "Search For Me in the Wasteland", a patient guitar swirl that's like a languid, emotionally acute version of Labradford.
Variations on those compelling sounds persist in other parts of Just to Feel Anything, but they're dragged down by an odd dependence on straightforward drum machines. So opener "Before Your Eyes" starts with a tense atmosphere, but a flat rhythm transforms it into a empty take on Mogwai/Explosions in the Sky-style cinematics. The following cut, "Adrenochrome", uses a similarly vague thump, and despite some hypnotic grooves in the middle, ends with soaring guitars precariously close to corporate video territory.
Before you let that description scare you off, be advised that Just to Feel Anything is by no means a crass, calculated makeover. The sounds and styles here are ones that Emeralds have leaned toward in the past, and they're clearly committed to them aesthetically rather than as a pander to expand their audience. It's just that the smooth side of their style predominates, and isn't counterbalanced enough by more surprising elements.
Still, even the weakest moments here feel just a few moves away from something much more interesting. So rather than dismiss Just to Feel Anything as a mistake, perhaps it's better to think of it as a mixed detour, one that some of the band's followers might in fact welcome. Personally, I'm hopeful that the idiosyncrasies that marked past Emeralds efforts will make a comeback.
