Numerous adversarial moods inhabit the third album of This Will Destroy Your Ears. Funland is, quite literally, the soundtrack to a desolate amusement park, inspired by the French trio’s time spent in Blackpool. Frequented is a deliberate, clashing feeling of joy and unease, assisted by en vogue producer Ben Hampson, who shares the trio’s profound, yet unpretentious, desire to encapsulate the world that Funland exists in; the doom and the what once was.
Very little feels as though it is standing stably, set to crumble or in the midst; each rhythm guitar take is thrusted like a crowbar smashed into a theme park ride, each bassline far more mechanical than your average. The former contentment of the park resides in the trio’s lack of qualms with being poppy; the choruses of Losing My Rag and Stop That Wacky Show are anthemic, original, and strangely in sync with the crumbling world that surrounds them. Catchiness and intensity are deeply in love with one another on This Is Why.
The album’s moods are harnessed by its shifting framework. This Will Destroy Your Ears boasts a slant on noisy rock music that refuses stubbornness, that never sticks to one guise. They invite multiple comparisons, but to their advantage, the keyword is ‘multiple’. The burning, classic post-punky landscapes of Pill Pop Night elicit a megaphone-voiced neurosis akin to The Fall, whilst No More Letters’ nightmarish guitar textures – a crystalised, reverbing high end lapping over grief-stricken power chords – suggest a harsher reworking of much of Joy Division’s Closer before Lost Our Track dons the same costume with no stitch out of place.
Gorgeous Eve Holds a Banger Hammer maximises Death From Above’s trademark, unexpectedly powerful approach to rock music, whilst strange shifts from dystopian sad boy balladry (The Way It Goes) to bulbous guitar roars (Orange Clown) resemble the ethos of post-no wave Sonic Youth.
The multitude-containing This Will Destroy Your Ears are searching further, expanding past whatever boundaries were formerly set, inventing new worlds and stuffing every possible emotion into them at once. A new bassist, a like-minded producer, and hell of a lot of ideas enthuse Funland enough to keep This Will Destroy Your Ears interesting, and allow the band to live up to its name, unlike ever before.