AUS EXCLUSIVE: The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - Harmlessness

It's been about two years since we first heard Whenever, If Ever, the first album from diasporic US emo-revival pioneers The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, but the wait for Harmlessness — the band's second full-length effort and first for esteemed punk powerhouse Epitaph Records — has been so much more than worth it.

One of the most immediately noticeable things about Harmlessness in comparison with its predecessor is the self-assurance in sound, ably assisted by newly purposeful vocal work from David F Bello and returning member Tyler Bussey (who was absent on Whenever, If Ever), while the instrumentation itself retains the band's penchant for effects-heavy post-rock/borderline chamber-pop elements. Lyrically and musically, this is the product of an undeniable evolution and maturing, evidently informed through sonic dalliances such as last year's one-off collaborative EP Between Bodies (with poet Chris Zizzamia); however, fans who expressed concern that TWIABP would double down on that format needn't have worried in the slightest. (Although, what's your problem with that EP? Let's fight.)

The album kicks off with the lo-fi acoustics of You Can't Live There Forever, giving way to the atmosphere-building blank #11 (a naming/numbering convention for short instrumental pieces found throughout the band's work) before the album truly looses the extent of its majesty on the listener with first single January 10th, 2014. It doesn't take long — whether during the upbeat explosions of The Word Lisa, the dynamic extremes of Rage Against The Dying Of The Light, the affecting minimalism of Mental Health, the sudden bursts of Haircuts For Everybody, or literally anywhere in-between — for it to become apparent that this is an album of experimentation and excitement; one of inner excoriation and exploration (the final two tracks, I Can Be Afraid Of Anything and Mount Hum run solidly north of the seven-minute mark) and, ultimately, one of the finest pieces of work to have emerged from, and consequently utterly transcended, the emo-revival movement of the late 2000s. 

Harmlessness is released this Friday, 25 September, via Epitaph. Pre-orders are available now.