I SEE STARS - THE WHEEL
Photo credit: Miranda McDonald
I See Stars fans have endured a long wait, with nearly a decade slipping since their last album. But THE WHEEL not only justifies this prolonged silence but reaches beyond the heights of 2016’s TREEHOUSE while spiralling into a cyclical exploration of psychological descent, told through the relentless sound of doom that makes I See Stars feel so inevitable.
THE WHEEL is defined by recursive structures, cycles within cycles that mirror life’s most inescapable struggles. From alienation, to identity, to relationships frontman Devin Oliver anchors a holistic outlook of cyclical misery. The unmistakeable sense of dread echoing from heavily-driven guitar provides the emotional backbone both contextualising and contrasting the lyrical and electronic layers atop it.
The record opens with an eery vignette depicting a spinning object, the sound is hollow and establishes an emptiness from which the storytelling will navigate. ‘The Wheel’ takes a moment to settle before launching into the drum-led electronicore. The vocals, like the rest to come, are delivered with fight, as though there is some invisible enemy of which this record seeks to defeat – perhaps, the wheel itself.
Despite its thematic weight, THE WHEEL has a surprisingly playful origin story. In the studio, the band would spin a digital wheel to decide which song to work on each day. Keyboardist Andrew Oliver explained, “We would throw songs onto this website wheel as well as some dumb, totally not creative thing in there that would like side-track us – but purposefully. It was this comedic approach that we were talking every day, where whatever the wheel told us to do, we’d do.”
This approach also ties into one of the album’s central themes: fate. On the spinning wheel, Devin Oliver reflected, What I really loved about the wheel concept was it wasn’t our choice. It was our choice to leave it to chance, yes, but we trusted the universe to point us in the right direction by spinning the wheel. It started off as a joke, but turned into this thing that became really important to us.” The theme of inevitability comes through most poignantly on ‘Eliminator.’ The lyrics, “This way wasn’t a choice for me / Not the way it’s supposed to be” capture the tension between agency and predestination. The track’s high-tempo snare contrasts with the general pacing, pulling the listener along an unavoidable path that continually circles back to the same point, reinforcing the album’s motif.
The record’s highlight comes on ‘Lost It’, a collaboration with Sin City emo-rockers Palaye Royale. Remington Leith’s vocals mesh seamlessly with I See Stars’ electronic layers, creating a tension-filled, emotionally charged track. A breakup song at its core, ‘Lost It’ captures heartbreak and longing as a part of the broader cycle whilst blending Palaye Royale’s more raw sound with the immersive textures of electronicore, making it one of the album’s most affecting moments.
The final track, ‘Curtain Calls’, does exactly what any album closer should – tie everything together. As Oliver explains, “Curtain Calls’ is tapping on every fucking thing we talked about on the whole record in one song. It’s almost like the spinning wheel in song form – it keeps turning round and is just racing through time and emotions. And the question we ask at the end of the song has a lot to do with the band. Will I ever be enough as an artist? Will the fans ever see us for everything we’ve put into this, which is essentially at this point our entire lives?” Musically, the song crystallizes the cyclical themes that run through the album. Beneath the rolled-back, more melancholic vocals, a propulsive drumbeat drives forward with little restraint, embodying a rage wrapped in sadness and perfectly encapsulating the emotional core of THE WHEEL.
THE WHEEL takes everything one might suffer across nine years and puts it into an unflinching and immersive musical experience. The record is undoubtedly a testament to years of sonic evolution and its cohesive ideas make for something neatly whole.
Josh Parsonage
★★★☆☆