Two Knights – Shut Up

Throw You Blew It and CSTVT in a blender, sprinkle on equal parts Empire Empire (I Was A Lonely Estate) and Boris Smile (and any number of Count Your Lucky Stars bands), serve to just about anyone wearing thick rimmed glasses and a flannel shirt and you will have satisfied the appetite of just about anyone in the screeching indie emo scene with a tall, frothy cup of Denton, Texas duo Two Knights.  In fact, the band’s latest full length, Shut Up, is a faithful addition to the 90’s emo revival movement that has set the underground abuzz.

But does all that mean you should grab a pint and check it out?  Well, that depends on who you are and just how much your taste buds can handle.

For starters, Two Knights isn’t exactly easy on the ears.  The lead vocals bounce around between wildly out of tune emotional outbursts and an equally tone-deaf attempt at sounding like Deathcab For Cutie.  When pitted against a backdrop of unconventional time signatures and twinkling chords, you get tracks like “Clark Can’t” – angry, schizophrenic juxtapositions wedged up against all out mental breaks that make for very polarized and disjointed listening.  For instance, suicidal statements like “I have nothing to offer” define choruses in “Symphony for the Righteous Destruction of Humanity,” running up against songs like “Just Pick a Dead End and Chill Out Till You Die,” which claim “I’ve found a purpose, and I’m clinging to it… because it is the only thing keeping me alive.” 

The whole album is very conflicted, and that’s undoubtedly the point.  But there just isn’t enough new here to separate Two Knights from their peers.  Even only clocking in at twenty-four minutes there are only so many times you can hear lines lamenting, “I’ll never mean as much to you, as you do to me,” or “I hate everything,” before zoning out and losing track of whether you’re at the beginning or end of the album.  “Sorry: The Musical” attempts some level of closure late in the game, but makes for a tale of too little too late.  Simply put, Shut Up lacks a sense of progress and progression. 

Shut Up is an album solely for those that just can’t get enough of the 90’s emo revival – particularly those who chronically wear their heart on their sleeve and seldom look on the bright side.  But Two Knights sound exactly like they their peers, and while they don’t really need to change their sound to satisfy their niche, Shut Up won’t win over anyone on the periphery.