Rolo Tomassi - Where Myth Becomes Memory

For all you could write about the specifics of Rolo Tomassi’s sound - about the thrilling clashes of ideas that have defined their five records to date, and that means there are so few frames of stylistic reference for them - surely the highest compliment you could pay them is that they’ve consistently sounded as if they’re impatient to outdo themselves at every turn. Forever taking concepts that shouldn’t meld well with their post-hardcore fundamentals, they make them sound like logical conclusions - having Diplo produce their debut album, backing themselves with majestic strings on ‘Grievances’, and painting the arena-worthy panoramas of ‘Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It’. That album feels like it represented something of a breakthrough moment for the Sheffield outfit in 2018, and ‘Where Myth Becomes Memory’ is perhaps their first record to feel like a genuine continuation. That isn’t to say that new territory isn’t explored in the kind of intrepid fashion we’ve come to expect - ‘Closer’, an epic paean to hope, might be their gentlest moment yet, while ‘Drip’ finds room for both punishing guitars and piano-led anthemics - but the album is scored through with the same smoothness of transition as ‘Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It’, between Eva Korman’s vocals, which both scream and soothe, between the brutality of the guitar work and the prettiness of the more reflective moments, and, most crucially, in the emotional equilibrium they find, somewhere between cold fury and quiet optimism. Another truly original triumph.