5 out of 5

Label: Touch and Go

Produced by: Steve Albini

I didn’t really know what to expect or hope for by the time It’ll Be Cool was released.  I’d joined in as a Silkworm lover after Lifestyle, which took me time to come around on, encouraged by the group’s more slapdash sound on earlier albums.  Once my ears adapted to hearing the throughline of their discography – passion, honesty, with a wry, tipsy smile – I could feel that same slapdash vibe on even more accessible jams like Lifestyle, if not sensing the internal nerviness and emotive struggles moreso as the group approached the laser-sharp anthems of Lifestyle’s, eh, style.  It’s one of my favorite Silkworm discs now.

But that same method resulted in Italian Platinum, the followup, which ranks as lower tier, to me.  Excellent individual tracks, but lacking in the sort of desperate, rumbling drive behind even slower affairs like Developer.

So: back to It’ll Be Cool.  A short track list for an album – 8 songs? – when the group usually hits a full 12; their cheapest looking cover yet – Italian was bland looking, but it wasn’t just a photo – and the progression between the previous two albums to consider.  Was I in for full-on, old-man kick-back-and-lemme-drink-ma-brewski rock?

Woof, hardly.  And though Cool was to be sadly followed by the accidental death of the group’s drummer, and thus the band’s dissolution, this was an album to go out on; an amazing swan song.

In a way, opening track Don’t Look Back says it all, through sound a lyrics: a fade-in, marching beat, a rare intro for the group, as though riding in from a past song, giving way to muted guitar scrapes – a particularly raw, bleak sound.  And then, of course, the title of the song (and the song’s theme) of moving forward; sure, this is old-man rock, and it’s confident as fuck, but not for producing smooth jams – it’s a group verily unleashed from past concerns.  This is paralleled by the reflective Insomnia, which transports Silkworm’s occasional history-informed content to the present, in the sense that the history is now their own: it’s sad, it’s celebratory; stay awake and survive. Cool then interestingly mirrors Italian Platinum’s structure a bit, as a long-form, passionate set of tracks give way to something crunchier on Penalty Box, but whereas Platinum’s proxy (The Old You) gets showy and fudges a riff, Penalty’s dogged bemusement at youth foibles is sharp as hell through and through, Matt Kadane’s keys (under usual-recording compatriot Albino’s deftly up-front production) refitted from tinkling additions to fangs hung on sweaty kit-punches, heartbeat bass, and fanged guitar riffs.  Glorious.

That this then gives way to two of the most expressively emotive – and yet distinct from one another – songs from SKWM’s catalogue, with the rollicking Xian Undertaker and the midnight, drunken fumbling whisper – fittingly wrapped in a toothy smile – of Something Hyper, is another satisfying, rewarding way of rounding out the album’s comprehensive sound, winding down for a progressively briefer, and ever-more-rocking set of concluding songs – picking up steam where others might be ready to bow out for the night.

That photo cover reveals its charm: no need to hide behind arty artifice, or touchups, or design.  ‘We are who we are,’ gravelly announes the band, track after track.  So just come along for a listen; it’ll be cool.