Nervus — Everything Dies: A Review
Ello Medium. I wrote the piece below almost 2 and a half years ago at a time where the only journalistic experience I had was talking to any band that would let me on a blog with about 5 followers. I reached out to a website called Track Seven who were run by a group of writers I admired and they took me on and comissioned me my first ever album review.
I used to wonder why they took me on at all. I was comfortably the least experienced and poorest writer of the pack but they gave me a home to write about my favourite music (usually made by angry queer people), made me feel like I had potential and dedicated time to working with me on my words. There was nobody, and is nobody around that does what Track Seven did for me. They really fucking care about the future of music writing, and they are the best publication on the internet for important, funny and bright takes around the subject.
As for me, I’ve now got bylines in Metal Hammer, Louder, Dork, Upset, Film Stories and What Culture, I’m able to make some sort of a living by writing and I feel pretty hopeful about my future. Whether I end up writing for a living after university is up in the air, but it just wouldn’t have been a possibility without T7. The piece below is the first I ever wrote with their help and had been gathering dust on an old site of mine, it’s on the record Everything Dies by Nervus — a few months later I got the albums cover art tattooed on my leg, that’s how much it means to me. Enjoy!
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Certain albums have this profound ability to evoke feelings that you’ve never felt before. They can be confusing and shocking but ultimately open your eyes to a new way of looking at life. A body of work can create a change in the way you see the world or simply just expose you to a sound so beautiful that you’ll never forget the time you first heard it. These moments are special and come sparingly — I can count on my fingers the number of albums that have affected me in this way. And Everything Dies by Nervus is one of them.
Nervus’ 2016 debut, Permanent Rainbow was a collection of songs intended to be hidden away from the world. 10 tracks detailing singer-songwriter Em Foster’s struggles with alcoholism and gender dysphoria, they were written by someone rife with her own demons — intended as a form of catharsis. 2 years later, with a songwriter growing comfortable in her own skin, Nervus are focusing their energy outwards, intent on highlighting humanity’s failures through life-affirming choruses and rapturous melodies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UiOjtm0COA
Album opener ‘Congratulations’ sets the tone for what’s to come, putting across everything that’s wrong with societal expectations. The record kicks off with lines like “Physical form has determined you”, “You hear the names they call the ones like you” and “On your first breath the expectation rests: who you should lie with in bed”. Nervus don’t allow an inch of passivity in the listening experience, the sheer power and brutal honesty in the vocal delivery serves to convey their message with such class and emotion. ‘Congratulations’ is flooring upon first listen, Em’s expressions of the battles she’s fought while not only dealing with gender dysphoria but feeling like the world is against her is an unrivalled reminder of what’s worth fighting for in life.
Songs like ‘Nobody Loses’ and ‘The Way Back’ read as autobiographical pieces laced with advice that could only come from someone who knows how it feels to lose hope. This is one for the weird kids, they operate as a reminder that society might not love you but that doesn’t matter as long as you learn to love yourself. It’s a message as old as time but one that’s often delivered more cynically by musicians lacking the honesty and human emotion that Nervus exude in every song.
These messages are hammered in by gargantuan arena-rock choruses and hooks for days. The “Woah-oh-oh”’s of ‘It Follows’ and glorious guitar lines of ‘Recycled Air’ are addictive, Everything Dies is so headstrong, so opinionated and so important that it grabs your attention and refuses to let it go. It’s populated with songs that have a Weezer-esque quality in the way they’re just meant to be accompanied by the roars of crowds singing along. There’s something so completely satisfying and about belting out “I know her name, I know her face and she’s dying to get out of me” from ‘Recycled Air’ or air drumming along to ‘Sick Sad World’.
Charm radiates from every pore of this album but manifests itself in the piano playing of Paul Etienne. Taking nothing away from the deeper motifs of self love and acceptance but adding a layer of fun and playfulness, Etienne pulls Nervus together giving them their own style and distinct sound.
The piano takes a front seat on the album’s closer, ‘Fall Apart’, a song that not only sums up the devastation that we’re causing to the planet, “We lit a match in a forest full of dead wood”, but pulls together everything that makes the album so special. These 3 and a half minutes of sonic beauty ends with a fade out equally as haunting as the start of the album, leaving the listener in unnerving silence, forced to reflect on their contributions to this Sick Sad World.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOdfVFQIFBk
The highs that the record hits through its gang-like choruses and instantaneous guitar lines put the songs that don’t quite achieve this enormity in sound in harsh perspective. Medicine suffers from being sandwiched between ‘Skin’ and ‘The Way Back’, two album defining moments that make indelible impressions through their lyricism and power.
Everything Dies sees the Watford 4-piece make a record so impressive that it’s rivalling the very best releases from the new wave of Brit-rock, a feat they have achieved by being nothing but honest, raw and confessional. Nervus are punk in their ethos, rock in their music and serve as a beacon of light for people who need to know it will get better. Life can be awful but sometimes we just need to put on a record and sing like nobody’s watching to remind ourselves why we’re here.
