It brings with it a kind of silence that falls upon the moment when Thistroubledsoul starts. It doesn’t hit all at once. It is time consuming, getting in slowly like some emotions when you have been holding on to them all along. Listening to Highroad No. 28 after almost ten years of silence on the part of the band was not really a reunion, but a continuation – as though the time was not wasted, but was silent, but distant. Any note struck by those years, and made by waiting, not by absence.
Being the second single taken off the album The Will to Endure, the song does not impose itself on the listener. Rather it is addressed in a subdued, nearly cautious style, as though one were saying words after a very long silence. One gets the feeling that the song has been waiting long enough to speak at last what it had to say.
In this instance, Andrew JC is on stage with all the instruments and vocals on his hands with the other band members moving off stage. One cannot fail to notice that loneliness. The song is intimate, almost personal, almost intimate, as though I had been given some access to the thoughts of another person, at his most vulnerable. His voice is a hard and deep one, and is loaded with weariness without ever becoming dramatic. No cry of pity, but straight-forwardness. It is as though hearing someone who has been holding it in since way too long.
The music skips around that emotional centre. Guitars extend out in dark and cinematic layers, without coming too overwhelming and the drums come in in controlled and intentional drops that hold the song down. Even everything seems purposeful. Nothing pushes too hard. The recording was done at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne and mixed by James Taplin, and it tends to the shadowy and the subdued. It is more introspective, compared to the songs the band released before, yet very melodic, as the mood is doing most of the work.
What lingers with me though is the feeling of perseverance that runs across the song. It does not sink itself, and it does not make at melodrama. Rather it is like perseverance in its silent list form – making an appearance, continuing, doing what has to be done when no one is around to see. Those unseen battles. That muted strength.
So, the re-entry of Thistroubledsoul comes as a reward. Highroad No. 28, having hibernated between 2012 and 2024, makes us aware of the fact that silence is not equal to giving up. Sometimes it’s survival. Sometimes it’s preparation. And sometimes it is just the break before gathering the power to speak once more.
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