Raquel Dalarossa
It’s been nearly three years since Triathalon’s last full-length release. Since 2015’s Nothing Bothers Me, the Savannah trio moved to New York City, recruited a new band member, and changed their sound entirely. Though they’ve always traded in slacker-tinged soundscapes, the new album, Online, sees them move decidedly away from their psychedelic surf rock towards R&B pop.
Those who tuned into the band's 2016 EP, Cold Shower, would have already seen the change coming. Those four tracks introduced an expressly sultry side to the band that hadn’t been spotlighted in either of their two previous full-length efforts. Online is a bit less lusty but just as smooth, with lead vocalist Adam Intrator moving comfortably between an energized falsetto and a lower register, rap-like flow. There’s a catchiness to each of the thirteen tracks on here, though it’s distinctly an after-hours sort of record—hazy guitar chords, synths, and piano keys float above the kinds of beats you’d hear at an apartment party that’s winding down. The more upbeat tracks, like “Sometimes” and “Plant” (the latter being a real highlight for its jazzy instrumentation), stand out from the languid, even anodyne quality of the rest.
Tracks like “Pull Up” and “Deep End” might register as seductive at first, but soon become sedative, especially in light of the album’s lyrics. In the former, broken sentences slowly put together a picture of a dreary routine: “I’m doing / My work outs high / I’m floating by.” And again in the latter, we hear Intrator struggling through the day-to-day: “Go back to my room and watch another show like everyone / Lately I can’t focus, work too much and deal with bullshit.” Online depicts a life of feeling overworked and out of touch, with relationships and substances serving as passive pastimes.
In light of this, the album’s title becomes intriguing. Though cynical takes on internet culture are overdone and overblown (see, for example, those videos that your aunt shares on Facebook, darkly portraying kids on their iPhones as the voiceover talks about how “disconnected” we all are), I think we all recognize, from time to time, the truism in the cliches. Being online is like switching our brains to a channel of white noise, our thumbs scrolling in absent-minded habit. How often do we find ourselves in that mental mode even when we’re not necessarily staring at a screen?
Online hardly mentions the internet outright (except for a couple of references to social media) but its portrayal of the everyday—sleepwalking through life and trying to fill our time—feels like the online ghost worlds we create for ourselves, spilling over into real life. Even on the most enamored and alive track (“I haven’t felt this way in a minute,” Intrator says), he’s still, at the end of the day, stoned and just sitting in his living room. “Couch” is a love song for the disengaged, eyes glossed over but dick somehow still hard.
There’s something odd about listening to pop that’s so depressing (particularly, for its relatability). Triathalon successfully explore a new genre without losing their talent for a conversational kind of lyricism that upends our experience of their music, putting escapism into a harsh light that reflects back on us.
