AWOLNATION
Most people who know of AWOLNATION probably found the band through its 2011 radio smash hit “Sail.” A haunting combination of hooky indie electronica and paranoid shouts, “Sail” was the longest-charting song on the Billboard Hot 100, until Imagine Dragons broke AWOLNATION’s record of 79 weeks with “Radioactive.” “Sail,” along with other alternative-radio hits off AWOLNATION’s first album, Megalithic Symphony, authenticated the band’s creative lead, Aaron Bruno, as an ambassador for hooky indie electronic music.
With the AWOLNATION’s 14-song sophomore album, Run, Bruno takes a couple steps back from the quick and quirky hooks that established the band at its debut. While Run still finds its foundation in Bruno’s pairing of repetitive synths and shouting vocals (evidenced by “Sail”), there is less of an emphasis on hooks than there is on depth and artistry.
Drawing from a wide array of genres, Run sounds like an exercise in variety. Though nearly every song is peppered with Bruno’s signature sing-shouting, there’s a clear distinction in inspirations. The album’s title song rides on the intensifying repetition of a trance track. The chorus of “Dreamers” sounds like Linkin Park, while “Lie Love Live Love” has the flavors of a Passion Pit deep cut. Among Run’s liberally used synths and drum tracks reside pianos, violins, acoustic guitars and choral vocals.
AWOLNATION still sounds like a band looking to the radio for some airtime. A couple songs off Run play with pop-leaning hooks and a more typical song structure — namely, the album’s first two early releases, “Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)” and “Windows.”
Ominous and existential, the album thematically tackles mortality with chilling ease. “I am a human being/ Capable of doing terrible things,” Bruno chants over a dark soundscape in “Run,” not letting on whether these “terrible things” stem from imperfection or supremacy. One of the album’s catchiest songs, “Windows,” touches on life’s ephemeral nature, questioning whether we truly understand anything: “Do we really know the way the wind blows?/ Are we really safer in the shadows?” the vocals lament.
Yet, almost contrapuntally, Run can also be surprisingly uplifting — or at least, spiritually cleansing. A slow tromp of piano and strings, “I Am” is resplendent with an ethereal chorus that sounds like a purging experience, and the chorus of “Lie Love Live Love” tells you to “love thy neighbor.”
One of the album’s biggest drawbacks is Bruno’s polarized vocal range. Most of the album alternates between coarse, chilling shouts and soft lullaby croons with little in between. There’s nothing that gets your blood pumping faster than when Bruno belts out an unhinged chorus over an unrelenting bass and synth combo, as in “KOOKSEVERYWHERE!!!!” and “Jailbreak.” But at the other end of the spectrum, slower songs like “Holy Roller” and “Drinking Lightning” are just sleepy attempts at diversifying the album. But to be fair, “Fat Face,” the album’s second track, successfully harnesses both ends of the spectrum, layering soft harmonies and raspy shouts for a song that stay interesting through to its end.
With its dark electronica and shout-singing, you can probably file Run right next to rap music in the “Things Your Grandma Wouldn’t Listen To” file. But for a provocative road trip through diverse and mostly dramatic soundscapes, Run provides a handy escape.