Good Mourning
There is a cheerful cruelty to the opening of Good Mourning. This Could Be Love makes a grisly fantasy sound catchy enough to hum while doing something entirely ordinary. Alkaline Trio understand the comic discomfort in that combination, and they build an album that keeps finding useful differences between a tune's surface and the words inside it.
Matt Skiba's voice has the rough edge this material needs. He can make a line sound exhausted, amused and faintly threatening without changing the whole performance. We've Had Enough gives him a sharp melody and an eerie organ sound, turning its complaint into one of the record's clearest statements. The extra texture adds character without demanding a separate display of importance.
Dan Andriano provides another emotional angle. His songs give the album more warmth, and the contrast keeps the dark imagery from becoming a uniform pose. One Hundred Stories and Every Thug Needs a Lady belong comfortably beside the more cynical material because the underlying need for connection remains clear. Derek Grant's drumming also adds a great deal, with tight, active playing that helps the songs feel full without becoming crowded.
Continental is especially effective at using a melodic lift to complicate its sadness. Fatally Yours is quicker and more sharply comic, trusting a compact performance to make its point. The band's fascination with death and damaged relationships can still become repetitive, and some images depend on the pleasure of a clever turn more than an unexpected emotional discovery. Yet the hooks are strong enough to keep that fascination from flattening the record.
Blue in the Face ends with a more exposed acoustic setting. The vulnerability lands because the rest of the album has worked so hard to dress similar feelings in jokes and vivid threats. Stripped back, the need underneath becomes easier to hear. Good Mourning is confident songwriting from a band that know precisely how much sweetness their darker material can bear.
