Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Neon Trees, ADA 2020.
This album is the first I’ve heard of Utah based Neon Trees and I like their pop oriented indie rock sound.
They’re an interesting band. They’ve been around since 2010 when their debut main-label album, Habits, came to the attention of the music press with the single, Animals, reaching #13 on the Billboard Top 100.
They followed that up with another well received offering, Picture Show, in 2012 and then Pop Psychology in 2014 before taking a break as a band from 2015 to pursue solo interests, before reforming in 2019.
The band is comprised of adherents of the Mormon faith although lead singer/songwriter Tyler Glenn renounced his religion when he came out in 2015.
He chronicled this period of his life through his 2016 Solo album, Excommunication.
The video for the lead single, Trash, depicted Tyler spitting alcohol on an image of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
It created considerable controversy, particularly amongst Mormons, although Tyler did receive a lot of support from the LBGTQI community.
I Can Feel You Forgetting Me is an intensely person album about relationships that are broken or under duress.
Many of the songs are incredibly honest, even brutally honest, about the anger, doubts and desperation that we can experience when relationships start to fall apart.
This level of heart-on-your-sleeve honesty is hard to pull-off as a lyricist without leaving your listener feeling a little uneasy.
As if we’ve just been privy to something we weren’t meant to overhear.
Tyler Glenn however has the lyrical ability to tap into the universality of the experience and the catchy pop/rock melodies somehow distance us enough to make it all acceptable.
The song titles give some indication of the intensely introspective nature of the album: Nights, Used To Be, Holy Ghost, Skeleton Boy, Mess Me Up, Living Single, Everything Is Killing Me, Going Through Something, When The Night Is Over, and New Best Friend.
It may seem that the album is unrelentingly miserable but it’s not, it’s actually really enjoyable.
