Album Reviews

Therapy? made a classic album in the nineties with “Troublegum” and scored a big hit a year later with the cover of Hüsker Dü’s “Diane” but after that it was back to the underground for these Irish guys. Not that they cared though… they’ve been cranking out solid releases at a steady pace ever since. Album number twelve is called “Crooked Timber”, it’s out now and it’s noisy as fuck.

Let’s start with the last two tracks of the album. The outcasts as I like to call ‘em with “Magic Mountain” being a 10-minute trip to a destination I’d never want to go to and closer “Bad Excuse For Daylight” sounding like an idea for a song rather than an actual song. Other than that “Crooked Timber” sounds like it’s the natural follow-up to the band’s 1992 album “Nurse” with a heavy emphasis on rhythm and heavy riffage rather than poppy singalong choruses tailormade for the masses. But that’s cool because playing heavy music with Andy Cairns’ sometimes-out-of-key vocals is what Therapy? does best. And even after all these years they manage to surprise with the title track which is perhaps one of the best songs they’ve ever written.

“Crooked Timber” is proof that a band can keep on reinventing itself and sounding fresh while still rocking out in a big way rather than sticking to a selfmade formula and slowly choking to death after a handful of releases like so many others.