The prospect of Still There’s A Glow being Sweet Pill’s ‘difficult second album’ would likely only be acknowledged from within the band itself. From the outside, they’d been living large as emo breakthroughs off their debut Where The Heart Is, touring with respected names like La Dispute and The Wonder Years, and counting the likes of Hayley Williams and Doja Cat among their fans. And yet, the twin fronts of burnout and expectation meet Sweet Pill at the centre. It’s not a new tale, but it never seems to get less familiar, either.
Thus, Still There’s A Glow is another journey through emo’s well-travelled straits of self-reflection. Throughout, Zayna Youssef embodies the weariness of overthinking and creative drain, as well as the tenacity to push on regardless. It’s the exact storyline you’d expect from the whirlwind rise from DIY darlings to something greater, a familiarity that’s why this isn’t quite amazing. Sweet Pill get tantalisingly close, but ultimately, Still There’s A Glow doesn’t find a pocket where it can really blaze. It simmers and shudders exceptionally, but so much brilliant emo as of late makes for a tough bar to clear.
By no means does that make any of this bad, though. There’s actually still plenty to really love about how Sweet Pill have grown, where the move to Hopeless Records has brought about a firmer emo physique and moved their Topshelf-standard twiddlies further back. The album starts off really well in that regard, especially Shameless in its marriage of earthy robustness with brighter, spidery accents. For an album designed to be laid-bare with as few frills as possible, the sound of Still There’s A Glow definitely accomplishes that. There’s warmth and a pleasant lack of varnish, knowing when to embrace its brittleness like on Smoke Screen, as well as harden up and get knottier like with Rotten.
It should go without saying, but there’s not a fleck of fakery or performativity to be found here, either. Youssef is as humble and open as vocalists come, benefiting from a timbre that’s not dissimilar from Hayley Williams’. Their common candour shines and informs Still There’s A Glow’s beleaguered sigh of a narrative. A song like No Control hits that perfectly—crescendoing, but not opulent; persevering, but deeply uncertain; powerful in feel, but not in spirit. Even on Sunblind, providing the album’s opening salvo of “Push back your hair so that you can see / Clear the air with every breath you breathe”, it lands more as Youssef crying out for calm for herself, as opposed to extolling the message onto others.
With all of that, there’s enough success on Still There’s A Glow to call it a good album. Sweet Pill perform with a sureness, and a restraint that mostly works. Still when they show flashes of what lies beyond, you wish they’d stick around a bit longer. It’d be wonderful to hear Chris Kearney’s spirited drum fills on more than just Sunblind and Holding On, or for Ryan Cullen’s bass to chug elsewhere like it does on Slow Burn. They really drill in while they’re there; it’s just a shame they aren’t there longer. The closest to a regular spike of the pulse is Sean McCall’s screaming, briefly slotting in in emo fashion as a more fervent emotional boil. He doesn’t sing with Youssef’s character, but he’s also not an awkward fit, handy when he appears on about half of the album’s tracks.
Granted, he and the other uniquely standout turns on Still There’s A Glow remain a little piecemeal in how they’re implemented. As established, Sweet Pill aren’t a band scaling grand heights in their music, leaving them somewhat disadvantaged next to the names who are. The big moments are here, for sure; outside of those, the seven-out-of-ten plateau is noticeable. Maybe it’s why the album does feel like it begins to peter out towards the end. It’s never outright bad or anything, but you get the impression that Sweet Pill might be exhausting their supply from, say, Jinx onwards.
But even then, to try and tie that in as some externalisation of the aforementioned ‘difficult second album’ saga is very ungenerous. An ever-so-slight downward trend is not conducive with failure, no matter how vociferously modern music discourse tries to spin it. More accurate, Sweet Pill are still safe and sound among the current emo generation’s frontline, just not a spearhead. And that’s okay. They’re still making good music with a solid ear for what their style still demands and allows for. Those who viewed their debut as a seminal masterpiece in the contemporary canon certainly won’t have an issue, nor will the vast, vast majority of emo enjoyers. In that respect, Still There’s A Glow achieves everything it needs to.
For fans of: Free Throw, Tigers Jaw, saturdays at your place
‘Still There’s A Glow’ by Sweet Pill is released on 13th March on Hopeless Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
