Album Review: Alkaline Trio - My Shame Is True

More than 15 years into their career, nine albums later and three years on since This Addiction, Alkaline Trio have dropped the obvious synthesizers of their previous effort and dipped their toes back into what made them so great in the first place in their latest offering, My Shame Is True.

Matt Skiba's songwriting becomes more personal, and in tracks like Kiss You To Death and One Last Dance this really pays off. Executed with the Trio's gloomy punk-rock assault of yore, Skiba's semi-autobiographical lyrics serve as a driving force for the passion prevalent throughout the first half of the album and in some of the finer moments of the last half. Unfortunately, it's in this second half where the album falters, as beyond the two minute raucous of I, Pessimist, a lot of the dynamism familiar to the melodic aesthetics of the band fizzles out. It's almost as though all the energy had been used up in the hook-laden opener She Lied To The FBI and its follow-on I Wanna Be A Warhol.

What was arguably missing in the two albums that came before My Shame Is True was the heart and vigour of their earlier releases that every misfit and black sheep could find solace in. They've not quite delved back into their formative years entirely, but with a new sense of maturity that has come with their age, Alkaline Trio have extracted some of the emotive energy of their earlier releases and carried it off with much less angst in a package that's catchy and more refined.