Album review: Dead Poet Society – -!-

LA quartet Dead Poet Society deliver some captivating pop-rock highs on -!- but, as that abstract album title portends, they have little interest in providing listeners an easy way in. Sporting a band name sort-of taken from the Academy Award-winning 1989 teen drama that saw Robin Williams’ inspirational Vermont teacher preaching nonconformity through poetry, their history as college friends from back in Boston remains apparent. Where previous releases like provocatively-titled 2014 single Sinn Féin and 2015 EP Axiom bulged with the aggression and gang-vocal-infused Celtic bravado of Massachusetts, however, these 16 tracks unfurl with the enforced self-reflection and cutting modernity of life back on the West Coast.

Feelings of self-doubt and anxiety pervade, right from heavily distended instrumental opener .futureofwar. and into the twangy alt.rock of .burymewhole. The youthful exuberance and unchained abandon of their college days has clearly been traded for the self-doubt and forced garage-rock swagger of trying to stake a claim in the crowded City Of Angels. That struggle manifests itself in some striking ways, mind. Beyond its propellant riffs, the deep grooves of .getawayfortheweekend. reveal themselves with a dark fascination. The fragile pop-rock of American Blood (‘I’ve gotta’ keep my head up...I’m tired and I’m fucked up and I cant stop’) seethes with real underdog attitude. I Never Loved Myself Like I Loved You is a gorgeous widescreen composition worthy of shimmering off festival main stages. Then the hulking industrial of .SALT. Comes on like Nine Inch Nails after a fully hipster-compatible firmware update.

From the awkward punctuation of their song titles through strange, lo-fi voice samples (-!-, -JU-, .gopi.) that aren’t anywhere near as impactful as they might be to the showboating genre-mashing of tracks like .CoDA., however, there’s the inescapable sense of artists trying too hard. In mainman Jack Underkofler, Dead Poet Society undoubtedly got a virtuoso visionary at the helm. The final salvo of .lovemelikeyoudo. (a marriage of sexiness and heaviosity like peak Deftones), .beenherebefore. (a stadium-rocker that feels like fun. on steroids) and atmospheric closer .haunted. (does what it says on the tine) is proof that their potential is unlimited. They just need to cut away the hyper-stylised clutter to let that poetry in motion truly flow.

Rating: 3/5

For fans of: Highly Suspect, Cleopatrick, Death From Above

-!- is out now via Spinefarm

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