In his memoir, Sid Meier, one of the true titans of video game design, goes to length to explain that, in his view, to steal someone’s idea and clone it is plagiarism. He also says though, that to steal someone’s idea and add to it is the very soul of progress and advancement.
We talk a great deal around these pages about how musical artists, particularly in rock and all its various splinters, are faced with a decision - either do something new, or do something familiar really well.
The Warning, the upstart trio of Mexican sisters who have been clawing their way up into the public consciousness since they were literal children, have found that rarest of all paths - they achieve both.
If you want to lay down as fact that The Warning are a band with a lot of polish and a refinement in their production that belies their age and status in the pantheon of rock, you’ll get little argument here. Those who thirst for the dingy edges and grimy ethos of the rock pits may well turn their noses as this new effort, Everything’s Falling, positively shines with high fidelity audio and pitch-perfect recording.
The loss is theirs. To dig into this new record is to discover a collection of songs that are, yes, sent through a glossy filter, but all have their roots in the messy experimentation of their forebears. The title track of this record may deceive through the prism of Dani’s airy vocals, but make no mistake - it’s a Soundgarden riff lurking under the melody, “Burden In My Hand” for the new millennium, juxtaposed against a bigger chorus and a (slightly) less fuzzy thump.
The album moves seamlessly to “Why Do You Like It When I Cry?” and now we’ve blended The Warning’s traditional tone with the playful rock romp of Canada’s BRKN Love. There’s a little melodrama here, to be sure, but that has more to do with The Warning and their idiom than it does with the style they’re weaving in.
And then the band takes us to “Bite My Tongue.” The Warning famously had a collaboration with Boston’s Dead Poet Society, a re-edit of the latter band’s “HURT” with the assorted vocalists trading spots. The two bands have also worked together on the festival circuit, and that connection bears fruit here for this single. “Bite My Tongue” is in many ways a DPS song, but again, filtered through the kind of melody and well-structured chorused that The Warning have become known for.
For all that, there are still two spots on the record where The Warning are inimitably their own - the requisite song “Ego” sung in the band’s native Spanish, thus continuing and long and successful succession of such songs. It does merit mention; the last couple tunes in their native tongue have the same rough cadence and tone. While catchy and listenable, it would be nice to see them blend this style and the playfulness of previous efforts like “Narcisista” into something new.
And at the end, the single “Kerosene.” Some Foo Fighters in there. A dose of Queens of the Stone Age. But all The Warning, especially the quasi-playground R&B chant in the song’s final third. This is the most successful blend of elements The Warning demonstrate on Everything’s Falling, and we haven’t even discussed the band’s penchant for groovy rhythms.
What we have here is a record that both synthesizes the success of the other members of rock’s current vanguard, and also displays what we’ve come to know from The Warning. Their ability to layer their own style over the…borrowed…concepts creates something new and advances the cause of the band as a whole. It’s well-crafted and original, even as the echoes of other artists ring in the background. It also proves that rock may not be dead after all.
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