The title is a good COVID-19 pun and a reference to the Jean-Luc Godard film “Bande à part,” complete with a “Box of Bones” video that includes a black and white sequence of a trio doing the Madison. In these days of streaming music, it’s only an LP (rather than an EP) because of Jenkins’ whim. Our Bande Apart doesn’t overstay its welcome at 32 minutes, it’s half as long as a typical Third Eye Blind album. You can almost see the “ Fin” card appearing as the album draws to a close. The ending piano notes sound like something from an old silent movie, a definitive wrapping up of the whole production. A thin and lonely trumpet makes an appearance here. Closer “Time in Berlin,” meanwhile, is a subdued piano number and also the requisite Third Eye Blind drug song (“I’m all blissed out again/ And I’m all/ All strung out on/ Oblivion”). The melody is pretty but the other effects are distracting. It’s a veritable casserole of odds and ends that feel haphazardly thrown together. It’s an awkward, trying-to-be-hip song with a trap beat, random noises, distorted vocals cutting in and out and a choir. “To the Sea” is the other duet, this time with Velvet Negroni (Jeremy Nutzman). It also features a screeching bass note that sounds like an elephant trumpeting.
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“Simple pleasures/ Like fucking strangers/ How to chitchat, I can’t remember/ Can you tell me how to be friends without being exhausted?” he asks. On the song he talk-sings over a thudding beat, musing about learning how to be normal again upon reemerging. The delivery on “The Dying Blood” makes me think Jenkins has been listening to a lot of Kanye in lockdown. The refrain was custom-made for chanting.
The rhythm guitar playing is powerful and crunchy, the lead guitar dripping in reverb and delay, and it’s going to sound great live. It could have been on 2003’s Out of the Vein (3EB’s last great album). Apparently inspired by covering “Disorder” in the studio, it’s a pandemic isolation song about “sleepwalking all year” and how the most important thing “is how we hold each other right now.”Īnd the best song on the album just happens to be an actual cover of Califone’s “Funeral Singers.” But this isn’t a faithful recreation of the rumbling and folky original cut. “Dust Storm” is a blatant homage to the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” although lyrically it sounds more like Joy Division. This seems unnecessarily accusatory, but he goes on to make some good points: “But everyone needs to be seen/ There’s no growing in the dark/ You say, ‘It’s just a pose,’ well, what’s wrong with a pose?/ We all invent ourselves as we go.” Fronting a band that came up in the “not cool to try too hard” ’90s, Jenkins can definitely speak to the struggle of trying to appear aloof while actually dying to “make it.” He seems to be extrapolating this to the Silver Lake folk scene. But then he points a finger back at his younger compatriot: “Deep down, I think you’re seething with ambition/ Like everyone else around, you’re on a mission/ To see just how many likes you can get.” “And this folk music’s fucking me up, makes me think I should quit,” he sings. Jenkins starts out with some honest, brutal self-doubt. Melodically, it’s similar to past hit “Motorcycle Drive-By.” It appears to be a conversation between Jenkins and a younger musician. “Silverlake Neophyte” is one of the most lyrically interesting songs. Jenkins and Colin Holbrook handled that on the album. It’s like the song is being driven in reverse. The driving, upbeat guitar sounds like the end of a chanted anthem (“Again! Again! Again!”) before transitioning to a solo and finally to an actual verse. “Again,” however, seems to start with an outro. One of the sexy things about rock music is the way a traditional song builds to an orgasmic place and then comes down.
It’s a light, fluffy, cruising-with-the-top-down bit of pop. Jenkins has described the song as “a horny surf-rock duet,” but for a song explicitly about sex (“You make me want to get it again,” they sing over and over), the groove is not actually very sexy. “Again” is one of two collaborations a duet with Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast.
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