“I always remember things better than they were and miss people more than I should,” explains Austin Getz, frontman of amber-drunk sun-seekers Turnover, when speaking of the mournful thinking behind the band’s fractured, Will Yip-produced breakthrough ‘Peripheral Vision’. Hyper-confessional meditations on sex, obsession, and loss ran through the self-crucifying offering, but where Turnover sourced ‘Peripheral Vision’s strength from yesterday’s glow, their latest long-player in ‘Good Nature’ sees the wilting, dream-pop bouquet finding harmony in the garden of remains.
Starlit bridges create a constellation of the Virginia Beach three–piece’s third effort – ambience humming beneath and between each track, keeping you airborne within a wide-view exploration of a feeling that Getz brands “hard to explain”: the meditative acceptance of all things – gifted by the ebb and flow of new-found love. Getz finds cloud-company in Julia on ‘What Got in The Way?’ – wandering wonder and swallowing questions of dreams and barriers. “I tried,” is acceptingly painted all over the wild tropics of the song, and with the line “I’m leaving tomorrow”, the past is quietly released. The air is thin on well-meaning lead-single ‘Super Natural’ – marrying moments of confusion and clarity on a heady bed of melody, but although predominantly forward-thinking, Getz flirts with nihilism and self-destruction on ‘Good Nature’ – questioning reality and the walls built-up by age-old habits, only to be knocked down by the presence of a “sunshine type”.
Although sickly-sweet at times, “If you wanted to go a different way, then I’d give you whatever you need,” sings Getz on ‘Pure Devotion’, ‘Good Nature’ is an elemental force – defiantly bright in the wake of ‘Peripheral Vision’s prominent veins of dizzying self-loathing, as if Getz is now able to draw propellant influence from soft-focus simplicity as opposed to seismic heartache. Where 2015’s aqueous installment slowly disappeared into a fog of dissolution and insecurity, ‘Good Nature’s optimism screams so loudly that it struggles to hide. As admitted on celebrative album closer ‘Bonnie (Rhythm & Melody)’, “It sounds like it feels.”
Released 25th August 2017 (Run For Cover Records)
Music Journalism student and lover of all things sensory and cosmic.
