Therapy? have been one of my favourite
bands since the mid-90s, and when I started doing these annual lists
were regular botherers of the top 5. But
it’s actually been a long time since they really produced anything that could
compare with their 90s/early 2000s output, and Disquiet is easily their
best record since Never Apologise, Never Explain way back in 2004 (which
came second on my list that year). The album opens
with the uncompromising ‘Still Hurts’, which recalls their Suicide Pact –
You First heyday of making a radio-unfriendly corporate-contrary
racket. But then it shifts, with the
second track ‘Tides’ being of a more soaring, High Anxiety style. Therapy?’s
back catalogue is now so extensive and varied that they can call upon it to inform
things track by track. Disquiet is
a varied but consistently excellent record, and a super return to form. Weirdly, its best track, and the best track
the band have written in over 15 years (as well as probably being my single
favourite track of 2015), is the album’s bonus track. ‘We Kill People’ has a riff to die for and a
wonderful lyric on the idiocy of the death penalty (‘we kill people who kill
people because killing people is wrong’).
Bonus track!?!
Unfathomable decision.
sample track: We Kill People
sample track: We Kill People
