After the lighter, more playful sound of their previous album, Scaled and Icy (2021), had disappointed many of their loyal supporters, Twenty One Pilots had three years to come up with the perfect comeback.
It was always going to be hard. A carefully curated world of ‘lore’ has been in the background of their work for many years. Finding a way of pleasing the fans that are following it, while not alienating the more casual listener, was a task that not many artists could work out.
The ‘lore’ was first properly teased in 2018, and (incredibly) simply put, the story follows a character called Clancy who lives on the island of ‘Trench’, in the city of ‘Dema’, and is in a society that is carefully controlled by nine bishops – including one called ‘Blurryface’ – who are the antagonists.
Therefore, they immediately drew their most hard-core fans back with the name of their latest record, Clancy, and the intro of track one, “Overcompensate” immediately draws us back to the much-loved albums Blurryface (2015) and Trench (2018), both sonically and lyrically.
It’s an incredible, high-energy opener to yet another concept album, which was to many a song that seemed to embody everything that makes up Twenty One Pilots as a band.
When we move on to “Next Semester”, we start to see something that is the biggest difference to their previous albums.
Tyler Joseph – writer and lead vocalist – is candid about his mental health problems in a way that we’ve scarcely heard for many years. This is an album where Joseph battles key issues head-on, with far less emphasis on metaphor.
Another highlight of the album for me is “Oldies Station”, a nostalgia-filled message to his audience, many of whom have found solace in the fanbase after suffering mental health battles of their own. ‘Push on through’, he sings.
The album as a whole is yet again produced spectacularly by Joseph and Paul Meany, taking inspiration from a huge number of genres yet again, seamlessly crossing ukuleles, rap and sounds of heavy rock – all expertly underlined by Josh Dun’s drum tracks.
It does, however, feel a lot safer than Trench, which was, for me, one of the best-produced albums, full stop. It had heavy-rock “Jumpsuit”, R&B-inspired “Morph” and the wonderfully unique “Legend”, and was much more varied in its song structure. Clancy has a very definite sound, and this isn’t necessarily a problem in itself; it would have been nice to see what they could do with a little more exploration.
I also have two specific gripes with the album.
Firstly, for a band that has always seemed to put so much effort into the track listing of their records, “The Craving (Jenna’s Version)” feels incredibly out of place. It’s a beautiful song – stripped down to Joseph’s vocals and a baritone ukulele – and is a song about his love for his wife.
However, there is also a “(single version)” of the track, which would much better have fit the album, especially as the song comes immediately before the incredibly cool, high-tempo, head-swaying “Lavish”. A song that makes you want to strut through the streets with a suit, tie and sunglasses on shouldn’t come immediately after a song that you fall to sleep to, in my opinion.
I also, so far, haven’t found a good reason for the minute-long interlude of bird noises in the album closer, “Paladin Strait” – which felt like it must be included in a music video.Its epic, lore-heavy music video is some of their greatest work, but it cuts that interlude out completely, making it a strange decision to include on the album.
Despite having some shortcomings, Clancy is a fantastic return to their roots as a band, and has been the soundtrack to many of my journeys in 2024. It brings the Twenty One Pilots story together beautifully.
8/10
