Twenty One Pilots - "Clancy"
The reason for the silly name will shock you!
The Ohio-based Alt/Rap Rock duo are back with their seventh LP, Clancy. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with Twenty One Pilots, as they’ve been one of the most popular Rock acts for about a decade, having found pretty immediate success after joining Fueled By Ramen. 2013’s Vessel and 2015’s Blurryface, their third and fourth albums, were both critical and commercial successes.
And they’ve been pretty hot ever since thanks to a devoted fanbase, the most fervent of whom belong to the Skeleton Clique, the name the band’s fandom has given itself.
I was mildly disappointed by 2021’s Scaled and Icy, which felt like a descent into mediocre territory.1 As a result, I’ve been a little nervous about this new album, just hoping the group could recapture their magic.
Spoiler alert: they really did.
Clancy is a lively, energetic ride with all of the unique charm which we’ve come to expect from Twenty One Pilots. The album is diverse, but there is never a moment at which it sounds like anybody but Twenty One Pilots, from electronic Hip-Hop of opener “Overcompensate” to the lush orchestral choruses of “Lavish” to the 80s vibes of “Navigating”. Part of that might be Tyler Joseph’s recognizable voice, but really Joseph and Josh Dun are just really in tune with one-another and this sound they’ve perfected.
I do think that sound has been tweaked a bit for Clancy. There’s an ambience that run throughout the album which I don’t recall from either of their more recent releases. I mean, I went back and sampled several tracks from Scaled and Icy after noticing it, but nothing there really equates with what I’m hearing on pretty much every track on Clancy. There’s an ethereal synth (and a xylophone?) in the background of “Routines in the Night”; I’ve already mentioned how lush “Lavish” sounds, much of it due to reverb-heavy violin; on “Next Semester”, the synth stands a bit more forward, but also sort of seeps lower into the mix, like clouds of dye slowly expanding lower into a cup of water. The synth is used pretty consistently (and effectively) throughout the album, but there are occasionally other elements used to stand in.
Much of their earlier material has a cleaner, more crisp quality in the final mix. So this is clearly a very intentional evolution or modification to their sound, possibly specific to this album; we’ll need to hear what they come out with next to know for sure.
So what about this album would provoke stylistic modifications? It likely ties into the title: Clancy.
But first…were you aware that Twenty One Pilots’ albums have lore? That, in fact, their songs are set in another universe? Because I was not. Apparently much of this plays out in their music videos, but it has all been confirmed by the duo.
Clancy is the protagonist (and speaker) in the majority of the band’s songs, played by Tyler Joseph.
So, seemingly every Twenty One Pilots album is another chapter in an ongoing saga. Check the above link for a detailed rundown. I’ve found references in the lyrics to confirm that this is, indeed, a thing. “Paladin Strait”, Clancy’s closing track, is an easy one to point out, here, as the closing minute has a lyric containing the name of another character, Nico, and then the album ends with another voice saying “Hello, Clancy”.
This is something I’m going to have to explore more, at some point.
What’s important right this moment is that Clancy is the best release we’ve gotten from Twenty One Pilots since Blurryface. It’s incredibly good. It is a potential Top Ten threat, I think.
Rating: Blue
That was before I had this fancy blog thing, so there isn’t a link. But for those interested, that album rated a Green and somehow fought itself to a 38th place ranking at year’s end.