From Iceland — If You Think This Is About You… You’re Right

Published July 15, 2014

‘If You Think This Is About You… You’re Right,’ the debut album from local band Different Turns, tries to infuse a bit of electronic wibbling into classic alt-rock guitar moves. And listening to it, it’s plain to see that they’re more than capable of making some really good tunes. Tracks like “Erotomania” glide along with a sleek hand in the production stakes, while “Out Of My Mind” makes a decent stab (this is a recurring theme in the album) at deep down country. The best tune, “High Hopes,” is a piece of guitar pop that could easily be slotted between the likes of Placebo and Silversun Pickups on X-ið radio.

‘If You Think…’ is presented as a journey into the dark twisted world of the human mind. The murky album art contains a cover of a blurred figure at your front door and the 13 song titles are also subtitled “Stab I” through “Stab XIII.” Opening track “Stab I – The Worst Things” talks about how “there aren’t any good horror stories today,” that “Hollywood has made them impotent,” and “the worst things, they come from the inside,” before going on to tell tales of people stalking and obsessing over spurned ex-partners with some rather tortured metaphors involving knives. Reading the lyrics alone, they come across in an MRA-style-“I’ll destroy the world and that bitch for leaving me”-manifesto letter. Done in the right way, this album could be bloody disturbing.

But ‘If You Think…’ goes awry in several instances as the tone of the music fails to match the raw nature of the lyrics. Tracks like “Stab VI – My Love Is Like The Bite Of A Knife” is plodding blues rawk while “Stab IX – A Broken Dream” comes across as Evanescence-lite (i.e. not even that gothic). The lowest point though is on “Stab XI -Untitled,” when it descends into Phantom Of The Opera wangling histrionics displaying corny melodrama that’s as clichéd as any Hollywood movie.

The album is rescued a bit in the last couple of tracks. “Stab XII – Wondering” manipulates the male vocals electronically, stripping the over-baked emotion and turning them into something cold and threatening, while “Stab XIII – Hope For You And Me” manages to meld the electronic sounds and guitars in an eerie way before letting in some light in a good closing moment.