When the members of Balance and Composure were on the cusp of breaking up, they already knew it was a mistake. Internal divisions, frustrating indifference from their label Vagrant Records and a lukewarm reception to the band's third studio album (2016's Light We Made) had left what vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons recently described as "a bad taste in everybody's mouth": "We were like, 'Let's just hang it up; it's not going to be what it used to be.'" And so, the Penn state quintet played their farewell shows in 2019 and soon disbanded for other pursuits. Yet much like the titular spectre that animates the group's latest record, the ghost of the past is an often-inescapable shadow that demands to be confronted.With their collective longing to create music as catharsis a nonetheless persistent fixation, the prospect of a revived B&C lingered in the liminal space between disillusion and reunion; a haunting presence of possibility and potential that was daring to be realized. After quietly reconvening in 2021 to jam once again and feel things out, the group immediately found their groove and began writing a treasure trove of "secret songs." This prospect proved all-too enticing for Grammy Nominated producer, engineer, frequent collaborator and unofficial sixth member Will Yip, who quickly gathered the quintet — Simmons, guitarists Erik Petersen and Andy Slaymaker, bassist Matt Warner and new drummer Dennis Wilson — into the studio to recapture their magic and release it under his own Memory Music label.Announced publicly in the form of a comeback two-track single, 2023's Too Quick to Forgive presented B&C as reinvigorated and emboldened. While the plaintive "Savior Mode" found the group wrestling with acceptance in "the great unknown," it was on the towering B-side "Last to Know"— a moody, near-seven-minute epic anchored by Simmons's hypnotic reflections on fear, self-worth and shame — where tantalizing new trajectories appeared like an apparition in the mind's eye. All of this is to say that acknowledging your failures, taking accountability and actively creating the emotional space necessary for personal growth are all crucial points of context and core themes explored on with you in spirit, the band's spellbinding fourth full-length album and first in eight years.Opener "reckless" plays like an arrested fragment from a more complete song suspended just out of reach, its runtime reduced to bursts of swirling guitar layers and overlapping vocal modulations from Simmons. This fleeting intro only serves to build nervous anticipation for the eventual arrival of "ain't it sweet," itself functioning as a glorious affirmation of the compositional hallmarks of B&C's entire career: aching call-and-response verses, huge choruses powered by overdriven grunge guitars, alongside glimmers of subdued drum pad triggers and ambient textures. Lyrically, Simmons retreads old ground with familiar motifs: all-consuming waves, spontaneous combustion and charged moments that leave you breathless. Yet with a newfound sense of maturity also comes a nostalgic understanding, for the past will always have its own allure: "Give in to its beauty / There's no need to be afraid."If there was a uniting lyrical thread woven through B&C's discography, it would be the overwhelming desire for human connection, a feeling mediated through, and frequently thwarted by, presence (Separation) and absence (The Things We Think We're Missing). On standout "believe the hype," this yearning is abruptly halted, morphing into a kind of weaponized apologia. Fundamentally a song about rejection and the pettiness that follows having one's heart stomped on, B&C wisely pair Simmons's boiling bitterness with one of the album's more muscular compositions, allowing lines about masochism and mistaking "lust for passion" to glide across shouted backing vocals, watery guitar leads and a truly triumphant chorus.Elsewhere on with you in spirit, B&C slow things down with tempered moments of self-reflection. Single "cross to bear" rests on a swelling mid-tempo progression that inches ever closer to a promised crescendo ("the ending is my favorite part"), while the anguished "sorrow machine" gives voice to howled desperation as Simmons contends with knowing that his romantic frustrations are doomed to become fuel for future lyrical infernos ("I brought fire to burn it all down/ Pay what you want/ Step right up, better gather round").Although Simmons has certainly been partial to vague metaphors and somewhat clumsy abstractions on previous records, his lyrics to the closing trio of songs on with you in spirit arrive naked and direct, with a pointed sense of vulnerability that borders on self-flagellation. Contemplating mortality and death as a form of closure, "a little of myself" finds the frontman processing his estranged father's ALS diagnosis in ways that feel rushed and fugitive ("Prayin' too late / Far gone and set in stone"). Turning his ire to the heavens, the penultimate "closer to god" rails against the futility of grief and the performative nature of faith, daring to ponder over a rumbling bridge section: "Where's the angel you're sending down? Why would a god want to keep me around?"Struggling to justify his absence during his mother's (successful) battle with lung cancer on the album's closing title track, Simmons is forced to accept that his glaring lack of presence has ultimately become an elusive spectre. Much like B&C's premature oblivion and subsequent reunion, some mistakes cannot be erased or ignored, only confronted. The pain of separation, the things we know to be missing, these can all be soothed and found once more: "I CAN BE WITH YOU IN SPIRIT."
Wavelength
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