Album Review: Good Terms - Turning Point

Here's the thing about evolution; even when it happens quickly enough for us to see it, we don't always notice when it occurs. Change is hardest to see when you're looking for it, because minor changes become normal before we realize they have moved the target. Let's take the work 'emo', as an example. When emo first started, it was an offshoot of hardcore. When I came around, emo was a pretentiously 'intellectual' genre for bands like Dashboard Confessional and Panic! At The Disco. Now, I'm not even sure what does and doesn't qualify as emo anymore. The course of evolution has continued, and I have not been paying attention, which means perhaps I'm better suited to seeing the jump.

The best way I can describe Good Terms is to take "From Under The Cork Tree" era Fall Out Boy, and strip away the personality from the lyrics. The way the band builds songs comes from not just that era of emo, but their particular approach to the genre. In a lot of ways, this sounds like a record that could have been a transitional piece between "Take This To Your Grave" and "From Under The Cork Tree". (I may get some heat for this, but Fall Out Boy's early work is not nearly what fans make it out to be. That record in particular is embryonic compared to what would come afterward.)

So what Good Terms are delivering is classic (it's my frame of reference, so deal with it) emo that happens to be a little bit rougher around the edges than the stuff that I remember listening to back in the day. It clearly sounds to me as if their influences were the same things I was checking out, which is both a welcoming echo of the past, but also a bit of an odd realization that perhaps emo hasn't evolved or changed much at all since the last time I was paying it any attention. I do sometimes worry that the extreme fragmentation of music, and the audience, leads to genre silos that are never allowed to change.

They sound their best on "Wither Away", where the half-time drumming makes the chorus sound more powerful, and gives it a chance to let the audience bang their heads along with the music. I have flashbacks to the early 2000s when it plays, and that's everything I want out of a record like this. As much as emo was at one point in time a form to express the angst and anguish of a certain age, it now exists for some of us as a comforting reminder of how we made it through that period. The issues feel smaller now, and we can both see and hear how we make more of it than perhaps we needed to. Emo allows us to vent, but also to measure our own growth.

I realize I'm not saying a lot to describe the album itself, but I suppose that's because I don't need to. Some music is more about a feeling it gives you, and that's what I get from Good Times. Their brand of emo is a throwback to a period of music I often feel was better (at least for my taste). The minor shifts from one song to the next, or dissecting a lyric here and there, are far less important than the overall reaction the album evokes.

Evolution takes us in new directions, but looking through the historical record, we can always see the line we came from. Good Terms may not be as far down the line as these years might lead you to expect, but they are a direct line back to an ancestry I was sad to see go. Having an album like this is a nice reminder, and it's especially handy to have in a month that looks bleak for promising new releases. Good Terms also has some good timing.