Frequency of the Week No. 7: Tides of Man

You may have heard all the hooplah about the new Dance Gavin Dance album, if you read this blog at all, I’d say it would be pretty difficult to miss it. But in case you aren’t hip, Instant Gratification will be the second full length album from DGD with Tillian Pearson fronting the band. Tillian is far from new to the scene, he had previous played with Rise Records labelmates, Tides of Man. Tides of Man played to a similar crowd, representing the more technical side of the genre, though they were always more polished than Dance Gavin Dance. They were the Envy on the Coast to Dance Gavin Dance’s The Fall of Troy, for all five of you that will understand that analogy.

Before Dance Gavin Dance worked its way into the picture, Tides of Man quickly became a technical powerhouse at Rise Records. Unfortunately, they sort of missed the wave of progressive post-hardcore featuring bands like the aforementioned The Fall of Troy and Envy on the Coast. They would have fit in brilliantly with them, and if they had come around a couple years earlier, they would also be the stuff of legend, but they were slightly too late to the game, destined to become a highly revered cult favorite of the genre, rather than the upper echelon of true classics. That is not to take anything from the band’s post-hardcore legacy, albums like Empire Theory are arguably better than most of the stuff any of the “true greats” ever came up with. They were just a victim of popular trends, which has no reflection on how undeniably talented these guys were.

Then as things would have it, Dance Gavin Dance got wrapped up in the endless shitstorm that has a tendency to follow Jonny Craig around, and they were inevitably left without a vocalist. After Craig’s departure in 2012, while Pearson was working on his solo album, he was asked to join the band as the permanent replacement. The resulting album, Acceptance Speech, was, not to put it too lightly, Dance Gavin Dance’s greatest work yet.

But what is a band supposed to do without a singer? And what if the singer they’re tasked with replacing is really, really good? So good that he can cast a rather formidable shadow over Jonny Craig. Well, that’s no easy task, in fact, most bands can never recover from such a thing, regardless of the caliber of their vocalist. But Tides of Man took an interesting approach to the idea. They decided not to replace Pearson. They went on without a singer and took their band in a completely different direction; they completely redefined their style, but lost none of their talent along the way. And that is the mark of a truly talented band; anyone can do one thing well, they turned the band on it’s head and still managed to rise to the top of their respective genre.

After a period of silence to regain their bearing after the departure of Pearson, they got back together and went on to write one of the most impressive post-rock albums I’ve heard in a long time, Young & Courageous. This is something the band had never attempted to touch before, but they managed to write an album that could compete with the best of the best; put this alongside Explosions in the Sky, and I’d probably listen to Young & Courageous. You would never be able to tell at first listen that this is the same Tides of Man that released Empire Theory, but when you find out, it almost makes sense; the raw talent is still there, these guys know how to write a song, no matter what it sounds like, but the style could not be any different.

This is one of the great, largely undiscovered talents of the last decade. Throughout their career they have put out consistently impressive work, despite several major setbacks, including losing an incredibly talented vocalist. But they took it all in stride, and are still out there making some truly impressive music. If you haven’t, be sure to check out Young & Courageous, whether you’ve heard their earlier work or not, and then go check out Empire Theory, and you’ll understand why this is one of the most versatile and talented bands to come around in a long time.

And stay tuned, because they have a new album on the way in 2015.