The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die-Review

Artist: The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die

Album: Harmlessness

Label: Topshelf Records, Epitaph Records

Release Date: September 25, 2015

Website: https://theworldis.bandcamp.com/album/harmlessness

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die are massive in every right way. Although they are credited with being a part of the “emo revival”, their huge sound now has more in common at times with a band like Broken Social Scene than they do Sunny Day Real Estate, and not just because of their giant lineup. More than just the music, the ideas expressed with their newest album, Harmlessness, are big as well. Relying more on the listener’s attention than a hook to hang on, Harmlessness wants you to look at it, but won’t pretend to be something it isn’t.

The World Is, have found what works for them. Greg Horbal’s departure since their last LP, Whenever, If Ever, means there aren’t the screaming vocals that almost worked the first time around, but now the performances sound cleaner, giving vocalist David Bellow plenty of room to shine. The production has been cleaned up since the last LP as well. Every instrument played sounds both important and necessary while also succeeding at the sometimes difficult task of giving songs their own identity and having the luster of a cohesive collection.

The lyrical content appears to be biographical, with stories and situations happening around singer David Bellow. There are tracks that appear about the band itself, like “Wendover”, which sounds like a trip back to the member’s formative days of leaving their “money in the box” and setting out for a town they love. Songs such as “The Word Lisa” and “Rage Against the Dying of the Light”, also give us an inside look into Bellow’s adolescent years as he laments losing his youth by “compressing days” or “jamming paper clips right into an outlet”, but the songs still seem to reel into his positive side like in “Life Will Always be Weird.”

The intro, “You Can’t Live Forever”, starts with an acoustic guitar in what sounds like a bedroom and tricks you into a sense of familiarity before kicking it up through the instrumental track and again into “January 10th, 2014”, a song influenced by “This American Life”. It details the story of Diana the Hunter, a Mexican vigilante who took revenge on the murderous Juarez bus drivers. The story is told through the sounds of a pulsing drum beat and big bass before keys and guitars take it through valleys and peaks and eventually into anthem territory.

Most of the tracks on Harmlessness provide much of this kind of tension in their composition. The closing tracks, “I Can be Afraid of Anything” and “Mount Hum” are great demonstrations on how using silence or a quiet guitar can crescendo up to the inevitable climax. Where most “emo” bands since the turn of the century would be perfectly content with providing a repeating, formulaic quiet verse/ loud chorus/ big finish scheme, The World Is, keeps you guessing what comes next rather than where the hook should lie.

Recommended Track: "Rage Against the Dying of the Light"