How To Take A Fall Review

How to Take a Fall is the four-way split EP by Juno Eclipse, Should Be Sweet (mixed by Georgia Harrison), Charles Carnabuci (mixed by Luke Payne), and Siphon (mixed by Andy Bailey-Hughes). It’s out November 7.

If ‘Midwest emo’ is defined by the twinkly, meditative jangle of  ‘90s college bands, then ‘Sydwest emo’ channels the heavier side of the genre’s second wave: think alt-rock and shoegaze à la Hum, and their post-2010 successors in Narrow Head-type melodic grunge-gaze and emo revival sounds. As Juno Eclipse puts it, The EP, mastered by Alex Berger, “displays some fundamentally different forms of Emo that best represent where our heads are at right now.”

Amid the hurricane that is the opening two tracks, Juno Eclipse balances heavy riffage with a delicacy that evokes its eye. If the common denominator of the EP is a thick, gazey undercurrent ridden to cathartic releases, the bands manage to distinguish their sounds and shirk predictability with moments of genre effervescence: post-hardcore, revival-esque, atmospheric rock, and pop-punk. In Lucy’s favourite moment on the EP, at 1.50 of Juno Eclipse’s ‘World Explode’, a scream of “…How it goes” heralds a post-chorus buildup (and chord progression along more alt-rock lines than the melodies preceding) which is delivered all the way to a deliciously gazey breakdown at 2.20. The reverb-laden vocals of ‘Secret Place’ morph into choral chants of “Let’s go under now….” that fade into the outro, in one of the record’s stand-out moments.

The punchy-drum-over-wall-of-sound used to great effect in Juno Eclipse’s first two tracks is extended to those belonging to Should Be Sweet. Where Juno Eclipse perhaps has them beat on gazey intensity, Should Be Sweet’s vocals are enchantingly-droning but also ring clear, straying from shoegazey obscuration. This is a great choice: ‘obviously’ and ‘Bruise’ are highly-listenable.  The riff that leads the former lurches into half-time, pushing on before it cuts, feedbacks, and is drowned out in a wave of relentless downstrokes and background screams. The epic harmonies woven into ‘Bruise’’s buildup from 1.25 to around 1.55 makes for another of Lucy’s favourite moments on the record. 

Trudging through the beefy distortion that dominates the EP, Charles Carnabuci offers beautiful snippets of the atmospheric and celestial. ‘House’, one of Arlo’s favourites, opens with the longest of the instrumental passages; floating vocals crop up at a minute and a half into the track for a sole verse. ‘Like a Dog’ (is that a xylophone in the background?? Awesome if so. Awesome if not) is, in its first minute, befit for a summer’s drive along the coast with friends. The potency of the title is then laid bare with an emotional plummet to screams of “Cause you put me down / Like a rabid dog”,  in one of the most affecting moments of the EP.

Siphon caps the EP with a punchy and pensive duo.  ‘A complete history of special pack-a-punch weapons’ opens with the eponymous COD Zombies sound. Jumping in and out of double-time (and accordingly Dude-Ranchy melodies), its postchorus chant of ‘never gonna get it back’ (or maybe ‘never gonna get a pack’?) invokes a rowdy pack of hooligans in the crowd chiming in. ‘Gold2Me’ burns slower. If there are two things Siphon excels at, it’s pop-punky licks and the balancing, as in the final minute of ‘Gold to Me’,  of an on-off dynamic that precipitates the explosion of a live show and the inevitable moshpit which these bands no doubt are capable of spurring.

The message underscoring the EP is friendship, says Juno Eclipse. How To Take a Fall is “something that reflects us all [and] that we can always have out there… Being in this scene with likeminded people is so amazing, and we’re just excited to see where it goes.” From Jerome’s Dream/Orchid, to Tigers Jaw/Balance and Composure, splits punctuate the narrative of emo history, and function to explore the nexuses of bands’ individually-cultivated sounds. Sydwest emo may present, in this sense, an exciting frontier in the very-much-alive Australian emo scene. “There’s so much happening in Australia right now, especially in Sydney. We feel like it’s super inclusive at the minute…..bands like could be stars, fear of horses and mycriesfallondeafears (who we’re playing with soon) Airline, half-request, Garage Sale, goblinviolence, triptychs, sun run……the split is just a small glimpse into that whole thing.”