“Running From the Chase”, Truth Club’s second album and first for Double Double Whammy, is one of the most alluring and uncomfortable records of the year. Placing heavier emphasis on melody and dynamic arrangement, Harrington and his bandmates, Kameron Vann, Yvonne Chazal and Elise Jaffe, have built an album that feels like a nihilistic Trojan Horse. These songs create an impending sense of doom while also getting stuck in your head. Lead single “Blue Eternal” sees them pushing further into the murky dread at the heart of their sound. As though taking on the POV of a poor soul caught in a whirlpool, Harrington sings “held in a wave of some vibration / a trace of our trial / stuck in its cycle”—the tense, driving guitars a riptide of their own.
That trapped feeling extends into songs like “Exit Cycle,” where calming guitar strums undergird the description of a wasted day framed as “two dozen hours, deposed.” It’s a song about the feeling of futility, lack of fulfillment, and hopelessness, and yet it’s palpably ambitious. Truth Club has mastered the art of the slow build, and when “Exit Cycle” reaches its peak, it’s transcendent.
Indigo De Souza makes a cameo here as well, singing a sweet, hazy backup that stands in contrast with Harrington’s commanding chant. On one level, there is a silver lining to all of Truth Club’s toiling music. Harrington wrote these songs during a particularly aggressive battle with bipolar disorder, and tried to capture his feelings within them. He describes it as though he’s placed these feelings “in a jar” to observe down the line. That they exist means he’s been able to sublimate them down into something new, something useful to himself and to us. The perspectives we hear from, singing from beneath a crushing weight, are doing so from the past. “Running From the Chase” is a reminder to let some light fill up darker corners.
From Truth Club’s “Running From the Chase“, out October 6th, 2023 via Double Double Whammy
The Fat Angel Sings 