Yeah, these are still going! They never stopped, as a matter of fact; The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus formed in 2003 and have been around ever since. You just might not have realised because Face Down and Your Guardian Angel used up all of their cultural capital by 2007 at the very latest, and it hasn’t replenished since. And to be clear, there’s not even the faintest implication from us of X’s For Eyes being what amends that. Reviewing this is more akin to rubbernecking at a band who’ve been clinging to the skids for what’s coming up on two decades, and what they could possibly be up to in 2025.
What comes to mind above all else is Silverstein and how this stacks up against them. Both are outmoded emo bands of roughly the same generation whose perseverance against shifting scene tides is their most commendable trait. But where Silverstein have built an impressive robust modern career on a musical front, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are a little more susceptible to creeping rust. On X’s For Eyes, the efficient upkeep just isn’t there; it’s a bit more workmanlike in how it falls out.
You’d almost expect something like that to be crippling for The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. They’re the perfect candidates for it, as the textbook embodiment of a mid-range emo band far past their prime and susceptible to falling behind. A louder, chunkier mix will obscure their age while simultaneously blowing away any cobwebs, though also feels notably less efficient than where, say, their Canadian contemporaries are at the moment. It’s more concerned with getting by than establishing a tentpole, world-tour-for-a-big-anniversary style of existence, even down to how the band members themselves are used. Inexplicably, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus have ballooned into a seven-piece, and though it’s a bit unclear whether K Enagonio contributed unclean vocals for this album, it’s a bit overkill to recruit a brand new member for auxiliary-at-best screams. Granted, that’s a far smaller matter than with lead vocalist Ronnie Winter, whose dwindled expressiveness really does betray a certain age and standing within genre hierarchies.
And yet, this is a very difficult album to dislike all that much. It’s already too utilitarian to hate, but there’s an earnest, good-hearted effort that, in the standing of legacy bands, nudges X’s For Eyes a bit further upwards. Sure, the production is unsubtle but it’s way more organic than you might think, and for the most part, locks into a brand of emo whose older-fashioned charm circumvents some dated style. With faithfulness to that 2000s era as unerring as on Kins And Carroll and Getting By, you’re reliant on nostalgia goggles to get the most out of it, and fortunately, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are more than happy to tape them onto your face, lest the illusion be broken for even a fraction of a second. If, by chance, they do slip, you’ve got some…less-good moments rearing up. The alt-metal bookends Always The King and Worth It are throbbingly obvious outliers, and the impotent slap of the drums on the title track rings like ‘elder emos’ (ugh, that phrase…) misunderstanding how to give their sound a modern tune-up.
You may notice a lot of criticism that’s been levelled so far, especially while maintaining the assertion that X’s For Eyes still isn’t too bad. Part of it could by those nostalgia goggles being so tight that some brain circulation is cut off, but you’re also kinda forced to amend grading criteria for bands like this. If they work through their most basic instincts, that’s good enough, and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are slavishly devoted to that mindset. Melodrama hits on Purple Halo and Bad Beat; Twenty Hour Drive plays with the pop-punk horsepower of Four Year Strong; and the bigger-is-better mindset in place on the majority of the album tends to come up good. There’s even a bit of lyrical flavour to sprinkle about, either through the emo excess of yore (“Are you a dark angel?” asks Purple Halo, over and over with an amusing degree of sincerity), or in the return of Face Down’s heavy-handed but well-meaning poignancy, this time around the forcible separation of immigrant families and communities in the US on Slipping Through (No Kings).
None of that particularly makes for year’s-best material; again, we’re working on a very pronounced curve here. And while that’s enough to write The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus off for some…no, that just doesn’t seem right. They’re producing enjoyable work with the tools they have, and in doing so, return to the flawed-but-fun emo albums of the 2000s that this writer will likely always have a soft spot for. Not enough to where the good will metastasises into full-blown nostalgia blindness (and keeping abreast of that ensures some healthy distance), but a good time’s a good time all the same. It’s fun enough for something so obviously out of its element in the modern day.
For fans of: Yellowcard, Story Of The Year, Anberlin
‘X’s For Eyes’ by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus is released on 3rd October on Better Noise Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
