Pianos Become the Teeth
Keep You

The snow falls in large, wet flakes on the gray asphalt. An oppressive silence, too many thoughts echoing in my head. In the empty and spectral house, I listen to "Keep You" by Pianos Become The Teeth, leaving everyone and everything outside my intimate solitude.
An album that diverges from the band's previous works, shedding the screamo attire worn in recent years, leaving only the strong emotional impact of the music intact. Go ahead and call it artistic maturity.

"Ripple Water Shine" is a melancholic explosion of faded memories, of ended smiles, of past loves. It is the memories and people of the past that bind together the ten amazing tracks of the album. Tracks that vibrate with a life of their own, tracks that possess an intensity and emotiveness that is almost unbearable. "April" (apparently dedicated to the singer Kyle's father, who suffers from multiple sclerosis) makes me think of when I was a child and when my father, still a young man, would lift me onto his shoulders to reach the goldfinch nest on the blossomed cherry tree in the garden. The sweetness of "Old Jaw" has the refined flavor of The National and the lyrical depth of Mark Kozelek; it has the scent of winter sunrises spent admiring the sunlight paint the sky pink.

The new PBTT album amazes and moves, mature and without a single flaw. Kyle Durfey's voice approaches perfection, mournful yet angry at the same time. "Repine" is goosebump-inducing, it’s the spectacle of ocean waves violently crashing against the rocks. The closure is entrusted to the seven intense minutes of "Say Nothing". Sounds akin to the delicate post-rock of This Will Destroy You that weave into an emotionally gripping bond with the old screamo of which only a faint trace remains, as if the band wanted to bid farewell to that genre one last time, the genre that saw them born, grow, and become adults.

Keep You is rightfully one of the best albums of 2014, reaching the high levels achieved by "colleagues" La Dispute and Touché Amoré. The move to a major label and the near-total absence of screamo was a concern, but Pianos Become The Teeth have beautifully crafted wonderful, warm and soft, angry and melancholic songs. Perfect songs for spending a long winter and feeling less alone.