
Music Editor Gemma Elgar believes I Can Feel You Forgetting Me to be the strongest Neon Trees album to date, dealing with themes of love and loss through the emotional aftermath of such events
As their first release in six long years, expectations were high for Neon Trees’ fourth studio album, and I Can Feel You Forgetting Me did not disappoint. The long hiatus was caused by frontman Tyler Glenn’s embarkment on a solo career in 2016 when he released Excommunications, an album whose themes run into the latest Neon Trees release.
Neon Trees have always dealt with feelings of heartbreak, but I Can Feel You Forgetting Me feels like a more mature take on the aftermath of such emotions
The heartbreak pop anthems begin in classic Neon Trees style right off the bat with ‘Nights.’ One of the strongest songs on the album, the lyric ‘I sit alone and wonder why / they say that boys don’t cry’ introduces the themes of I Can Feel You Forgetting Me as a whole perfectly. A song about lying awake at night and overthinking, it sets up the rest of the songs on the album as these wondering thoughts in question. It has a belter of a chorus, and makes for a fantastic opening track.
Why mess with a winning formula?
‘Holy Ghost’ follows next, maybe the track that best defines the album as a whole, dealing with loss of love and religion and tackling the album’s consistent double meaning the most blatantly. ‘Skeleton Boy’ continues this theme of hollowness and spirituality, leading into ‘Mess Me Up,’ of which Tyler Glenn stated on Instagram: ‘So much of a codependent relationship is the feeling of unfulfillment. Here I’m begging to not let it go on longer than it needs to.’ ‘Mess Me Up’ is the slowest song on the album, but still undoubtedly poppy, and echoes the specific heartbreaks of Excommunications. The lyric ‘LA is so dramatic / But I’m learning to like the traffic’ in the first verse seems to be a direct reversal of ‘I hate the traffic in LA’ in Excommunications’ opening track ‘Sudden Death (OMG).’
The upbeat melody … captures a general acceptance of the past, as apposed to the album’s earlier tracks of anguish
I Can Feel You Forgetting Me ends with ‘New Best Friend,’ a song that holds the most allusions to Excommunications and also, therefore, Tyler Glenn’s personal life. In a tweet, he wrote that ‘New Best Friend is about embracing the crazy that lives within all of us: The nostalgic highs, the unflattering lows, and the beautiful messiness of being human.’ I Can Feel You Forgetting Me is a beautiful remembrance of things loved and lost, and the journey of independence as a result, moving on and anticipating better futures with self acceptance. The inspiration so clearly drawn from Glenn’s personal life makes the album all the richer, and is what puts I Can Feel You Forgetting Me aside from the rest of Neon Trees’ discography as their strongest album to date.
Rating: 8/10
I Can Feel You Forgetting Me is available now via Thrill Forever, LLC
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