New Album Never Enough and “Seeing’ Stars/Birds”video from Turnstile

With assistance from Will Yip who we interviewed in Tape Op #151, along with A.G. Cook (Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek), and Jason Lader (Jenny Lewis, Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile), frontman and producer Brendan Yates helped himself and his bandmates construct a collection of songs whose scope only becomes obvious after you have listened and returned to the beginning to start again. The further you dive into Never Enough, the more it reveals, and not just about the band, about the version of yourself you’re becoming. 

Openness, acceptance, and thoughtful expression of feelings. A rejection of tough guy posturing and the gatekeeping of hardcore music. Tight, rhythmic guitar lines, two-minute songs, and live shows that are to stage divers what Pipeline is to big-wave surfers. This is what Turnstile is known for.

Reverbed vocals that shimmer, guitar tones that could be lifted and placed on a psych-rock album. Synths and examinations of modern life while wrestling with self-doubt in a world that doesn’t value authentic connection. This is also what Turnstile is known for.

It may seem unrealistic, or even exhausting, to attempt to connect these two periods if you had only tuned in for their early 2010s releases, but Turnstile had been planting clues all along. A drawn-out instrumental interlude here, a bridge of orchestrated feedback between tracks there; they subtly folded these ribbons into the foundation of their work, the blocks that would eventually build up to, then surpass, the magnificent 2021 release, Glow On.

Never Enough is a full step into this mirror world, a complete contrast to any genre-specific origins they may have once had, but still an examination of personal growth and humanity, a declaration that if you stay true to yourself, you can leap from the precipice to your future versus riding momentum back to safe and familiar climes.