District 97: Stay For The Ending

It’s always interesting to analyse exactly why a band dropped off your own personal radar, and in the case of District 97 that point was also when I first encountered them. From that you might take it that I disliked 2012’s Trouble With Machines, but actually I found it a strong, invigorating and in places pleasingly challenging album. Why its taken me 11 years and two ignored studio outings to come back round to them I’m not quite sure, I mean, I closed my review of …Machines with the thought… “On the evidence of this album, they'll have a lot of people interested in their journey.� And yet, forget this band I have until the lead single from Stay For The Ending arrived and well, underwhelmed me quite significantly.

Luckily a promo CD plopped unannounced onto my doormat a few weeks later (a very rare occurrence these days, so it was received with much glee), so it would have been rude not to delve in wouldn’t it? Oddly, what first listen and many subsequent spins have confirmed is that, to me anyway, lead single “X-Faded� is the weakest point on this album. Strange how many bands do something along those lines, but there you are. As a song it finds D97 not quite knowing whether they are a pop band or a prog outfit, with a relaxed, beautifully sung verse courtesy of Leslie Hunt grating against a much more off-kilter chorus that when put together feel barely to be on speaking terms. In all honesty I don’t like it more now than I did when I first heard it, so why Stay For The Ending wasn’t introduced by the rather excellent “Mirror�, who knows? Again, a beautiful melody welcomes us into the track, however this time, gentle guitar strumming is quickly broken up by a more aggressive riff that stops and starts with real menace. Hunt’s vocals as a smoother passage then breaks up the melee are impressive indeed and in truth, she’s great throughout, with an innate ability to make some quite complex structures feel way more readily accessible than they should.

That said, Stay For The Ending isn’t always a smooth journey - or rather sometimes it really is, with the dreamy pop of “Many New Things� ear-catching but rather throwaway, and when the prog dial is ramped up it does feel just a little like someone suddenly remembered that something else should be going on. When those more devil-may-care sections are really allowed to spill forth, as they do on the album opening title track, things click into place, the guitar work from Jim Tashjan locked in tight with the keyboard crescendos from Andrew Lawrence. With bassist Tim Seisser and drummer Jonathan Schang both skilled enough to expand the musical horizons without stepping on any toes, at full tilt this outfit are a thing to behold, so why this album wastes time with the pointless minute-plus of “X�, which feels like the Jaws theme without the drama, I’m not sure. Add in that it then tumbles into the aforementioned “X-Faded� and well, it could be fair to suggest that I find this album, as a whole, to be a bit of a stop start journey. The good, such as the muscular, strutting “Deck Is Stacked� and the much more avant-prog metal of “The Watcher�, heavily outweighs the not so good, but I can’t help feeling that every time this collection of songs really builds up a head of stream, District 97 go to some lengths to yank the release valve.

Rewarding and yet, for this reviewer anyway, really quite frustrating, Stay For The Ending, dazzles and excites in places and confuses in others.

Track Listing
1. Stay For The Ending
2. Mirror
3. Many New Things
4. Crossover
5. Divided We Fall
6. Life Cycle
7. X
8. X-Faded
9. Deck is Stacked
10. The Watcher

Added: November 18th 2023
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: District 97 online
Hits: 758
Language: english

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