I think it's helpful to be excited while you're doing something. Excitement goes a long way to explain what you're doing, even if you (the observer) don't necessarily understand why anyone would do that thing. I saw a short video clip of people running through Times Square to get a good spot for the ball drop as soon as they were allowed in that barricaded area, people sprinting to the front barricade to get a good spot and stand there for, I dunno, eight hours, until midnight. I hear some of them wear diapers, which is fucking gross. But still! Those folks looked excited! I can't really begrudge 'em for doing something that I wouldn't normally do, because being excited feels good.
The New Year seem the opposite of excited throughout their sophomore album, The End Is Near. I don't know what the deal is here. This is a new band to me. I think I assumed that it was going to be a good time because New Year's Eve is usually a good time? I guess the naming of the band was ironic. Or maybe just reflective of the direction New Year's Eve trends as we get deeper into adulthood (so I'm finding, anyway—I was in bed by 12:10 AM the other night).
I care less about genre these days. I don't have a problem with whatever you call this, and in many ways prefer these genres—indie rock, slowcore, slacker rock, whatever—but I'd rather listen to music from genres I don't like by artists who are happy to be there than the New Year, who are playing a slow, listless version of everything I've ever liked in the past. They kinda remind me of Pavement but even slower and without the snark. Or possibly a foursome who really, really doesn't want to be a Death Cab for Cutie cover band but ends up sounding kinda like them anyway. I am not a huge fan of Pavement or Death Cab to begin with, so the returns are even further diminished here.
I think what the New Year are going for is "dark." Most of the lyrics are poetically vague or vaguely poetic, so I can't point to any song and say "this is a dark narrative!" Something like "Age of Conceit" seems creepy, with what the title implies and lines such as "But legs can't stay uncrossed for long" adding to the implication, but it's all interpretation. I guess I'm interpreting it to be a macabre album for whatever reason. I suppose that reason could be a lot of it seems to point toward the "we are getting old" tropes that I find so effecting (since I too am getting old). Maybe more specific details would've helped to get me into all that, just through a simple understanding of what exactly they are trying to say, instead of inferring based on the fact that none of these songs have a tempo above a funeral dirge.
That's not technically true, I suppose. Not "none." "Plan B" reaches maybe medium tempo, which is something! (Should've been the New Year's Plan A, amirite?!) And then there's "18," which is the best song on here by default. I feel passion in that guitar-solo outro. There's real longing there. Again, it's all interpretive, especially since there are no lyrics, just guitar noodling, but man, if the New Year could've done something like this in most of the songs instead of just one of them, I'd be dropping a positive review here.
As it stands, I am pretty disappointed by this. I am not excited, because the New Year are clearly not excited. It's about expectations too—here at the start of a new year, checking out an artist that nominally fits very well with the season, wanting this album to feel good and to mean something and to inspire excitement... and then it just lands with a thud. Maybe if this is a random June deep-cut album, I'm cutting it some slack. Here at the very beginning of 2025, it's a dud.
FUCK, I hate writing reviews like this. I want to be excited about music! Don't you get it, the New Year? I want to like your music. Music is great because it can be a conductor to transmit emotions. What the fuck is wrong with you, calling yourselves "the New Year" and sounding like Tuesday, January 17th at 2:57 AM?! Don't you understand your responsibility here? Don't you understand the power you wield? And you choose to piss it away with some sluggish bullshit like this? We coulda had sumtin here, man. We coulda started our year right. We coulda blasted off into 2025 and never touched ground. Instead, I'm over here falling asleep. No excitement whatsoever.
GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5
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