Irish trio Two Door Cinema Club is back after a hiatus with the album “Gameshow,” which dropped on Friday.
The exhaustion, anxiety, and intra-band tensions that came with tirelessly promoting and touring their previous album “Beacon” sent lead singer Alex Trimble, guitarist Sam Halliday and bassist Kevin Baird their separate ways for about a year.
When they reunited, they came back with the notion of discarding their old sound and creating a new type of record. The new sound they created is still pop, but blended seamlessly with disco, eighties influences, and a lack of radio pop formula driving the songs. Channeling artists like Prince and Bowie, Two Door Cinema Club employs falsettos and synths while still holding onto their guitar riffs and distinct pop flavors to create an incredibly fun and artistic album.
Contrasting the groovy, pumping music are the anxiety-ridden lyrics, detailing Trimble’s disquiets and self-discoveries that were uncovered during the band’s hiatus, like in “Ordinary” and the album’s buzzing title track.
In addition, songs like “Are We Ready? (Wreck)” and “Bad Decisions” detail Trimble’s separation from our generation and our obsession with technology and commercialism. Claiming to not “really understand the internet,” and feeling “very out of place for the past few years,” much of the album is dedicated to Trimble trying to understand the world around him in terms of celebrity culture, social media, and consumerism.
Two Door is also coming to terms with the digital age that erased the ability to make a fruitful profit off of just selling records. While their “Changing of the Seasons” EP was released in 2013, they realized touring was more than just a fun perk of their career – it was integral. Baird says:
“In the class system analogy, we’re the middle class. We’re not the Taylor Swifts or we’re not this super-underground new band. So that level is shrinking…we’re being squeezed in the middle because we’re making less money from selling the actual art so we have to tour more.”
But this time, they’re taking touring at a steadier pace so as not to reawaken the tensions and passive-aggressive attitudes the band members developed towards each other while promoting “Beacon.” The plan is to play shows for a couple of weeks and then go home for a couple of weeks to take a break from each other. No more non-stop touring and promoting. The balance will keep the band steady and together.
Every band experiences a breaking point, but with this album, it’s clear that Two Door Cinema Club found the glue and sound to keep them balanced and better together.
Halliday says of their single "Are We Ready? (Wreck),"
"It's very much rebelling against [commercialism]. The lyrics play on that and hating how the world is going in terms of commercialism and how people are addicted to social media and living on their phones."
