After the Party
Getting older is not presented as a useful achievement on After the Party. The Menzingers' characters have more experience, but not necessarily more money, stability or good judgement. The band make that uncomfortable gap sound lively and recognisable, with some of their clearest melodies carrying stories that rarely offer an easy way forward.
Tellin' Lies is an excellent opening. The first part has a casual, almost defiant confidence, then the song's final stretch lets more anxiety show through. The change feels like a person losing the ability to keep the joke going. The band use the arrangement to reveal something the initial delivery tries to hide.
Lookers is just as effective at making nostalgia complicated. Its chorus is bright and inviting, yet the remembered youth has enough self-consciousness to avoid becoming a simple celebration. Midwestern States brings the uncertainty into a more specific relationship, with affection and dwindling options sitting uncomfortably together. The song is moving because neither feeling cancels the other.
There is useful variation around those large choruses. Black Mass introduces a gentler shuffle and a little more space, while Bad Catholics lets the band's humour sound playful rather than merely bitter. The guitars remain clear and forceful, and the singing has enough wear in it to make the stories believable without turning every line into a performance of exhaustion.
Some characters are less fully drawn. Charlie's Army leans on a familiar kind of romantic confrontation, and a few of the anthemic passages can seem too ready to tell the listener exactly how to feel. The record is strongest when a small detail carries the emotion before the chorus enlarges it.
The title track finds an unusually warm place to stop, but Livin' Ain't Easy then restores the practical worries that warmth cannot solve. It is a smart final decision. After the Party allows affection and a good song to matter, while acknowledging that both still have to survive the next morning.
