Pianos Become the Teeth sound exhausted on Keep You. As well they should. For the better part of a decade, they’ve created music of extreme emotional and physical engagement, music tagged as “post-hardcore” because of the reverberating guitars and five-minute song lengths or “screamo” by the less self-conscious. Their 2009 debut Old Pride had a recording of Kyle Durfey’s mother describing the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis on her husband, a perversely calm moment because words were being spoken instead of yelled. Longevity isn’t expected out of the bands or the people in it, and there are an equal number of former and current members of Pianos Become the Teeth. Several moonlight with Geoff Rickly’s hyperbolic, great punk rock and roll swindle United Nations; by comparison, that’s a fun band. And now here’s Keep You, the result of Pianos Become the Teeth spending the past three years switching labels and drastically reconfiguring their sound, consequently putting everything at risk. You will feel the burn.
Keep You is Pianos' first album for punk heavyweight Epitaph, which likely means it will be an introduction for many. If that’s your situation, take a few listens to their previous highlights and know going in to Keep You that Durfey does not scream once. This is important for several reasons, the least of which is that a lot of their older fans are pissed. Because it turns out that he can actually sing, and in a rich, resonant register rarely heard in indie rock and often associated with flannel-clad he-men of various stripes. But these are lyrics that require subtlety and range, as Keep You edges towards acceptance following the four stages of grieving that preceded it. During opener “Ripple Water Shine”, Durfey takes himself to task—“I'm still always slowly waiting for what follows/For what I've learned about being so defined by someone dying,” and going forward, he does raise his voice, but it never cracks. In this music, you process and tolerate your inner turmoil rather than drowning it out.
Meanwhile, here’s drummer David Haik performing some of Pianos’ older material. He doesn’t do that either on Keep You; he’s just as active and dexterous, but nowhere near as loud, darting around “Repine” and “Ripple Water Shine”, reminding the listener of the herculean effort they’re putting forward to repress their rage and how that could fail them; they probably won’t lash out, but they might. And these are guitarists who haven’t lost their technical prowess either, they just don’t have to play as fast or loud—Chad McDonald and Mike York rely on fingerpicked patterns and blunt-force chording to alternately constrict, mesmerize, soothe and bludgeon.