4 out of 5

Label: Polyvinyl

Produced by: Jay Pellici

A great album that I never listen to.

And a step further: a great album that I kinda hated upon release.

Trump Harm gathers up many things 31Knots had been building towards since shifting to Polyvinyl and rather perfects them, removing nearly all wanderings from previous albums, and allowing vocalist Joe Haege to really zero in on his role as screaming, emotive frontman, encouraging his lyrical focus to be more poetic and personal and less, as a Pitchfork review put it, prolix. The zeitgeist of the day is also filtered through the group’s shattered pop: new-wave / electro influences are the musical thrust, with a couple tracks starting out in Good News…-era Modest Mouse territory.

Reviews of the time all considered these positives, and, from afar, I can’t outright disagree: Trump Harm is a tight disc of singles, every track landing on a hook and with a clear (enough) m.o. I do think that Joe’s willingness to be less oblique with his lyrics (something carried over to White Wine) encouraged some eye-rolling lines, but that’s subjective; slightly less subjective is that I don’t find there to be much range to the disc – that it’s almost all heavy beats and shouting is one of the reasons I didn’t revisit it too much.

…Which was part of my dislike. I’d come around to 31Knots Polyvinyl sound after the fact, but at the time of these releases, I missed the proggy, guitar-heavy focus of their early albums, and lamented the shift toward more (relatively) accessible jams. Jay Pellici’s production added a layer of fuzz that didn’t always serve the crunch the group could provide. However, the throughlines were always there – Joe’s aggressive, cryptic lyrics; the complexity of composition; the quiet-to-loud intensity. Preceding album Worried Well finally shifted the equation away from guitars, but this felt more like a change along the same axis than a jump to a different chart. And while I suppose Trump Harm could be said to do the same by fully changing to a sound which favors keys and robotic beats and a very “treated” presentation, the adjustment here felt more dismissive, like this 31Knots would no longer be playing the old ‘Knots material in concert.

But that’s me.

Setting aside my history with the band, and trying to come at it fresh, it’s an affecting, precise pop disc, though – as mentioned – limited in playthroughs by its always on furor.