Just To Feel Anything

Just as there's something inescapably seductive about fast cars in a nocturnal metropolis, there's something innately pleasurable about this Emeralds release. [Nov 2012, p.58]

Part of what makes Just to Feel Anything such a rewarding listen is its ability to quickly shift between aerial jams and understated lulls without abandoning Emeralds' unspoken ethos.

While some longtime fans may find Just To Feel Anything's retreat from the cosmos a disappointment, the album's relative conceptual restraint actually allows it to be even more emotionally accessible, inviting the listener into the trio's interstellar clubhouse instead of only letting us peak in from the outside.

What emerges is a cathartic, theta-wave blend that could score a fighter jet skirmish over a Himalayan peak during a lightning storm and the opening montage of a siren-strobed cop show from 1985 with equal efficacy.

Just to Feel Anything doesn't disappoint, although those eager for meditative meanderings might feel detached from its propulsive, purposeful tangents.

The album really peaks though in its most contemplative moments.

It's easily Emerald's least utilitarian album yet. [No. 94, p.53]

Just shy of magnificent and unprecedentedly accessible, Emeralds' latest is not their best work, but at least in terms of the group's development, it's among their most exciting.

There's much to recommend Just To Feel Anything and while, as with all retro-leaning instrumental rock, the question of its exact purpose is perhaps a little hard to answer when the details come together, as in Adrenochrome's shifting bass-line, or in how the title track gradually blossoms into life, such concerns are ultimately rendered entirely, wonderfully, redundant.

Tightened and more focused, Just To Feel Anything wouldn't entirely jar the listener out of their headphones. Still, it shines when you hold it up to the light.

There's real drama in the band's sweeping crescendos and ringing guitar chords; there's something genuinely affecting in their newfound emo overtones.

While there are some audible growing pains, Just To Feel Anything holds a great deal of promise and first-rate material.

The amped-up chiptunes and film score moments are interesting enough, but the band sound their best when expanding on the lush tones and tension-laden improvisations they've been working on since the beginning.

The Ohio trio took their time with Feel Anything, arriving at this more focused, albeit less celestial, effort.

To write off Just to Feel Anything as a misfire would be a mistake, it's full of highlights and tiny moments of golden perfection which will help it find a home in the hearts of fans and critics alike. It's just that a glossy patina makes them hard to discern.

Rather than dismiss Just to Feel Anything as a mistake, perhaps it's better to think of it as a mixed detour, one that some of the band's followers might in fact welcome.

Just to Feel Anything never quite seems to justify itself in the way that Does it Look Like I'm Here did, to compel you to pay attention in spite of its apparent familiarity, by whatever method. And as a result, it just feels like a lot of wasted energy.

The first four tracks are surprisingly limp-leaved, pastel-shaded electro-synth in a decidedly retro vein. From then on, it gets better. [Dec 2012, p.71]