My favorite quote about Turnstile came from Brian McTernan, who produced their 2015 debut full-length Nonstop Feeling. “They’re fearless, and they know themselves and they trust themselves,” he said in 2022, reflecting on sessions he’d done with the band eight years earlier. “They’ve had a vision of who they are.” So it’s fitting–perhaps even long overdue–that vocalist Brendan Yates decided to produce the band’s fourth album Never Enough himself. Nobody knows Turnstile better than Turnstile, and with all the outside pressure that’s surrounded the long-awaited followup to their breakout 2021 album Glow On, who better to steer the ship?
Glow On was a game-changing album not just for Turnstile but for the hardcore scene overall, a scene that its members had been part of even before forming this band in 2010. It helped take Turnstile to places that bands of their ilk rarely go–the Grammys, an arena tour with blink-182, a mainstream hip hop festival–and their rising tide helped lift all ships as other bands from the hardcore scene started playing to bigger crowds than ever and receiving all kinds of outside attention. And Glow On‘s wide appeal wasn’t just because of its pop sensibilities. Its musical variety–which found Turnstile branching out into R&B, go-go, dream pop, funk, psychedelia, electronic music, grunge, and thrash metal without obscuring their hardcore DNA–took the band to so many new places because so many different types of music fans could find something in it to connect to.
Four years later, the expectations that they’re up against for a followup are impossible to satisfy. Is it too similar or too different? Too far in the pop direction or too far away from it? Does it stray too far from their hardcore roots or make too much of a return to form? The title Never Enough is easy to read as a double entendre: on one hand, whatever they do to try to meet the insane demands coming at them from every direction, it’s never enough. On the other, you could quite literally read it as “never enough Turnstile.” The album-opening title track feels like the “Rape Me” to Glow On opener “Mystery”‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a song whose similarity to the previous album’s hit is so on the nose that it has be intentional. If you do want more where “Mystery” came from, there it is, right at the top of the album. But if its placement as lead single and opening track made you think you’re in for a ride you’ve been on before, buckle up. Never Enough has some obvious similarities to its predecessor–even its blue sky + rainbow artwork comes off like an intentional counterpart to Glow On‘s pink sky + clouds–but it feels more like a crafty sequel than an attempt to rewrite the same album they wrote last time. It’s a sequel so inspired that it might spark arguments over whether or not it’s even better than the original.
After the comfortingly familiar album opener, Never Enough is loaded with musical fusions that even Turnstile’s day ones might be caught off guard by. Turnstile with Latin horns and a reggaeton beat? “Dreaming.” Turnstile with new age jazz flute from genre torch-carrier Shabaka Hutchings himself? “Sunshower.” Turnstile goes The Police? “Seein’ Stars.” Turnstile goes ambient pop? “Magic Man.” A song that asks what Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” riff would sound like in Turnstile’s hands? “Slowdive.” The most pop punk Turnstile song since “Blue By You”? “Time Is Happening.” Glitched-out Turnstile with help from A.G. Cook? “Dull.” (Maybe that’s related to the Charli XCX co-sign.) A nearly-seven-minute Turnstile song with an all-timer riff, a sample of The Wire, and an IDM break? “Look Out For Me.”
And the keyword in all of those fusions is “Turnstile.” When the dreamy, atmospheric synths introduce “Magic Man” and the funk-infused guitars fuel “Seein’ Stars,” it sounds as immediately “Turnstile-y” as all the big riffs and shoutalong hooks do. Plenty of moments on Never Enough wouldn’t traditionally scan as hardcore, but the question of “Are Turnstile still a hardcore band?”–which has been floating around social media since the first single dropped–is shortsighted. What those in doubt should really be asking is “Are Turnstile still true to themselves?” and the answer is a very loud yes. Just like the band that Brian McTernan met during the making of Nonstop Feeling, the Turnstile of Never Enough is fearless. They approach every crazy, atypical idea with total sincerity and dedication. They know that their band and their fans thrive on high-energy catharsis and they provide that at every turn. The spiritual quest that they’ve been on lyrically for 15 years has no end in sight. And if we must go there, only a hardcore band would have high-speed, Bad Brains-indebted rippers like “Sole,” “Sunshower,” and “Birds.”
Adding to Turnstile’s holistic vision for the album, Yates and guitarist Pat McCrory directed music videos for every song that make up an accompanying film, and certain moments already feel inseparable from the songs themselves. On their last album, Turnstile claimed that you really gotta see it live to get it. That’s still true, but as Turnstile increasingly embrace the power of the studio (they decamped to Rick Rubin’s famous Laurel Canyon studio The Mansion and lived at the studio while making this album, a first for the band) as well as the power of ambitious music videos, the Midsommar mosh of the “Birds” video brings the power of Turnstile’s live show into your home with the same type of intention and artistry as the album itself.
Sonically, Never Enough feels like a deeper dive into the post-hardcore aesthetic of Glow On–with Glow On mixer Adam Hawkins reprising his role–but it’s less streamlined than its predecessor. It returns at times to the looser, more adventurous approach of 2018’s Time & Space, and Time & Space producer Will Yip came back on board to assist Yates with additional production and to co-engineer the album (with Jason Lader). Glow On contributor Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) worked on Never Enough too, though you probably wouldn’t pick up on it if you weren’t looking at the liner notes. He sang backup on “Seein’ Stars” and played cello on “Look Out For Me” and “Never Enough,” and his contributions are subtle. The same can be said of marquee-name backing vocalists Hayley Williams (“Seein’ Stars”) and Faye Webster & Liam Benzvi (“Time Is Happening”). The saxophone on “Dreaming” comes from Leland Whitty of BadBadNotGood. Blink and you might miss how many stars are on this album in inconspicuous supporting roles.
For all the external changes to Turnstile’s career that Never Enough will inevitably be received as a response to, it also follows a big internal change: the 2022 departure of founding guitarist Brady Ebert. The guitar interplay between Ebert and McCrory (who joined Turnstile in 2016 and also played in Angel Du$t alongside Yates and Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang for many years) was a driving force on both Time & Space and Glow On, while Never Enough finds McCrory as the sole guitarist. (New guitarist Meg Mills of Big Cheese and Chubby & the Gang is now an official member of the band but didn’t play on the album.) Things sound a little different with this lineup, but Turnstile have always been highly collaborative and it’s not hard to hear how Yates, McCrory, Fang, and bassist Franz Lyons came together as a team to fill the space left by a founding member’s departure. One less guitarist does not mean a dip in the amount of memorable riffs, and Turnstile find other ways to fill the sound too. Brendan Yates’ synths/keyboards come to the forefront on Never Enough, and Daniel Fang’s polyrhythmic percussion is as melodic as the guitars, keys, bass, and vocals. Dave Grohl famously praised Ringo Starr by saying that if you pulled all the instruments besides his drums out, you’d still know it was a Beatles song, and that that’s the sound of a signature drummer. It’s no exaggeration to say that the same is true for Daniel Fang and Turnstile.
Never Enough obviously won’t be the album that every Turnstile fan hoped they’d make; that’s not possible. But I think it’s undeniable that Turnstile still have something to say, and they prove that again and again throughout these 14 songs. They nail a balance between satisfyingly familiar thrills and jarring left turns, and both cases make for moments that stop you in your tracks no matter how many times you hear them. The list of contenders for “best Turnstile riff,” “catchiest Turnstile chorus,” and “most random Turnstile part” all just got longer, and the definition of what a Turnstile song can be got wider. Some of the best moments come in those more ambient parts when the traditionally-trademark-Turnstile elements drop out entirely. Never Enough was made by four people who understand that the space between the noise only makes the noise hit even harder.
Pick it up on vinyl in the BV shop.