twenty one pilots
Clancy

There was a time when being a fan of Twenty One Pilots was an experience that closely resembled not missing a single episode of your favorite fantasy series. Almost ten years ago, the duo composed of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun inaugurated, albeit in a still embryonic form, a lore centered on the character of Clancy (played by Joseph in the videos), a member of the rebellious group of Banditos and the author of numerous escape attempts from the imaginary city of Dema, oppressed by the nine bishops led by Nicholas “Nico” Bourbaki. The intertwining of this narrative with the more personal (and at the same time universal) one about anxiety and insecurities was likely the key to the success of "Blurryface" (2015), driven by the musically chilling singles "Stressed Out" and "Ride". The expansion of the storyline was accompanied by an evident artistic maturation in the subsequent "Trench" (2018), to date their pinnacle, where reggae and hip-hop influences were immersed in darker territories thanks to the colorful production of Paul Meany, who helped Twenty One Pilots explore all the potential of their multifaceted pop.

The attempt by Joseph and Dun to distance themselves at least for a moment from a lore that had become too cumbersome (I quote some song titles: "Nico and the Niners", "Bandito", "Leave the City") came three years ago with "Scaled and Icy", an out-of-focus album too closely adhering to modern pop-rock radio structures to arouse interest. Except for the notable airplay of the overly catchy single "Shy Away", the album was a failure on all fronts, leading to speculations that "Scaled and Icy" was a propaganda product imposed on Clancy by the Dema bishops.

Realizing their misstep and eager to regain public and critical favor, a few months ago Twenty One Pilots began promoting the new album "Clancy" as a "return to Trench" and "the final chapter of the saga". A single like "Overcompensate" fires all its shots to try to convince us that nothing has changed since 2018: a melancholic opening entrusted to the piano, driving drum patterns, a flow that pays homage to Eminem, Paul Meany back at the production helm, and even an interpolation of "Bandito". But the right reading key is given to us by the title: Tyler Joseph is trying to compensate for the lack of lore in the previous album, convincing himself to be in the same mental space he occupied six years ago. It's a deliberately exaggerated opening, but it's also the perfect synthesis of the duo's compositional skills.

Some doubts about the reliability of the proclamations materialized with the release of "Next Semester", the second track on the album and the second single released: it is true that the sound palette of "Trench" was very broad, but pop-punk was certainly not part of it. The song, already intriguing for the instrumental choices (it is built almost exclusively on the distorted strumming of the ukulele), also stands out for its beautiful lyrics: the protagonist has a panic attack in the middle of the street, doesn't remember what happened, and is encouraged by a motorist to forget past difficulties and restart the academic life with the right foot ("Can't change what you've done / Start fresh next semester"). "Backslide", which closes the single trio, confirms what we suspected: the common points between "Clancy" and "Trench" are very few. To look for a more fitting parallelism, the song is an evolution of the "Blurryface" sound: pop-rap verse over a minimal soundscape based on a few keyboard notes and a multi-voiced emo chorus.

In the remaining ten tracks, Twenty One Pilots hop thither and yon among genres, making up for some dips in inspiration with variety. Pop-punk returns less brilliantly in "Midwest Indigo", which suffers from the excessive slenderness of the sound, due to the absence of rhythm guitars. "Navigating" has a hook with debatable metrics, but it is overall a more successful song, as it diligently absorbs and modernizes the dance sound of early Bloc Party (now definable as "classic" given another explicit recent homage, that of Paramore with "This Is Why"). "At the Risk of Feeling Dumb" proceeds on autopilot, but it boasts an anthemic chorus and a nice message about ensuring the mental health of one's friends.

And, if tradition dictates that a couple of passable acoustic ballads should not be missing, "Clancy" also contains moments where possible evolutions of the duo's sound loom on the horizon. "Lavish", almost entirely rapped, revisits the theme of compensation to criticize the ostentation of luxury many resort to trying to survive in the music industry; it successfully combines a beautiful string arrangement with a refrain that seems to spring from Tame Impala's vocals, offering some amusingly burlesque verses ("I see your problem is your proctologist got both hands on your shoulder while you're bottomless"). Kevin Parker comes to mind again listening to the final track, "Paladin Strait", a midtempo with ukulele, moderate disco influences, and a dreamy, hypnotic tail, narrating yet another escape attempt by Clancy ("I would swim the Paladin Strait without any floatation / Just a glimpse of visual aid of you on the other shoreline, waiting / Expectations that I'm gonna make it").

The only real slips occur when Joseph and Dun flatten on absolutely impersonal stylistic elements ("Routines in the Night") or when they decide to overdo it by increasing the drama to the absurd ("Vignette", which in the chorus winks at the now fifteen-year-old "The Pantaloon" and in the verses offers us an offensively bad imitation of Mike Shinoda).

Despite some shreds of lore continuing to surface in the lyrics, the focus of "Clancy" is certainly not on that. The promotional strategy was misleading and those waiting for the sequel to "Trench" will have to keep waiting. However, after digesting the thirteen songs and putting aside the initial disappointment, a positive judgment remains on the work. "Clancy" is a lively, varied, very catchy album and endowed with sufficient personality; it naturally doesn't replicate the total success of "Trench", but when DeBaser implements the half-star between 3 and 4, it will be too late.