Stylistic changes come with creative risks.

In 2015, Title Fight sought a shift in sound. Long the purveyor of power-packed drumming and unbeatable bass, the Kingston, Pennsylvania band turned on tradition with their third album, Hyperview. Shortly after signing with record label ANTI-, the band released a public statement, proudly broadcasting their newfound look on making music. This dynamic change transfigured Title Fight’s sound to a dreamy, shoegaze-influenced sound reminiscent of Slowdive and Turnover. Their dramatic shift in style is an exercise in evolution. For better or worse, Title Fight trades in their traditional approach for a newfound approach in atmospheric anthems.

Aesthetics

The band’s growth is readily apparent on their maturity. Hyperview shares a cohesive connection to their previous album, Floral Green, but it still manages to exist in a world of its own. Dreamy melodies with the guitar take over where walls of sound would once reign supreme. The consistent shift between minor/major keys can be unnerving for some listeners, (songs like Chlorine being the biggest offenders) but rarely does it ruin the experience of the song. Hyperview is Title Fight slowly gaining confidence with their new sound. It’s a trial and error process, but the former more frequently succeeds over the latter.

Best Aesthetics: Your Pain is Mine Now is a bird’s-eye look at the album. It encapsulates the strongest facets of Hyperview in a quick and concise package. From the hypnotic guitar intro to the surprisingly soothing lyrics, Your Pain is Mine Now feels weightless and ethereal. The instrumentation carries the listener from verse to verse. It’s strongest facet is its interlude, a time-warped guitar-and-vocal combo that transitions listeners to a bone-chillingly eerie closer. Your Pain is Mine Now is far and beyond the album’s strongest song.

Lyricism

The key theme of Hyperview is knowing how to use your time wisely. We’re only given so much of it on this earth. Doing anything short of what we dare is a disservice to ourselves and the world around us. Songs dance through themes of trauma, urgency, and revenge in an instant. The overbearing theme of time is present throughout the album, but can occasionally fall short. Songs like Mrahc, a brief but hard-hitting song about false trust, feel incomplete, their message not quite reaching the heights that were initially intended.

Best Lyrics: Rose of Sharon divulges into ideas of permanence, making things last, and choosing where to invest your time. Metaphors about stopping to smell the roses are paralleled with the urgency to keep moving forward. It’s a complex song that dives into the ego and confronts the idea that many of us try to live in the past. Stopping to enjoy the moment is fine, but choosing to prepare for the future is just as imperative.

Personality

None of the band’s cerebral lyrics or engaging attitude has left on Hyperview. In fact, this dramatic shift in sound allows it to take the forefront of each song. Hyperview is an exercise in building confidence. Stylistic changes can put a band’s career on the line. Succeed, and you’ll embrace a new wave of change with your music. Fail, and you run the risk of ruining your image. Title Fight attempts to walk the fine line between both with Hyperview. It’s hard to play it safe with a shift this dynamic, and the band knows it. Failures are met with patient understanding on Hyperview, but can occasionally bog down an otherwise consistently clean project.

Where Personality Works: The album’s third track, Hypernight, highlights each artist’s individual strengths. From its incredibly catchy bass chords to its dreamy, otherworldly guitar, Hypernight is a gut-punch of emotional repression expressed through written and instrumental fusion. You can feel the band firing on all cylinders on Hypernight; each is allowed to exist in their own atmosphere without stepping on each others’ toes.

Quality

The dreamy, ambient approach to song composition allows each track to smoothly transition into the other. The songs float above the air, adding buoyancy to each syllable and note. This atmospheric song style is a risky endeavor — at times, it can be hard to determine where one song ends and where the other begins. New listeners may feel dizzy by the time Trace Me Onto You transitions into Liar’s Love. They’re still trying to work out the kinks of their sound, but the highs greatly outweigh the lows.

Highest Quality: Trace Me Onto You goes back and forth from major to minor key, changing the pacing to match each shift in a wonderfully soothing sense. The song’s outro, an almost immediate shift in melody, slows the song to a tranquil crawl to the finish line. You can feel the song gradually shifting to this slower style at the halfway point. At first, you don’t know it’s coming, but once it sets in, the gorgeous guitar makes it more than worth the wait.

Conclusions

With enough work, risk can merit reward. It’s difficult to accomplish, but Title Fight is able to dig out a variety of diamonds in their new outlook on songwriting. While some of Title Fight’s long-lasting fans may feel betrayed by this choice in change, it feels like a wonderful start of something new in the world of post-punk. The band still has a few kinks to work through on their sound, but Hyperview will be looked at as an early adapter of the inevitable wave of shoegaze-infused punk that will grip studios for years to come.

Final Score: 7.3 Stylistic Shifts/10

Do you like dramatic shifts in sound? You’ll love Turnover’s Peripheral Vision. Miss the hardcore roots of Title Fight? Check out Foxing’s Nearer My God or even Joyce Manor’s Never Hungover Again for a familiar return to form. Want a review for an album you love? Head on over to the contact page and drop your info!