DWAR: Turnstile -- NEVER ENOUGH

DOG WALK ALBUM REVIEWS: where I walk the dog and listen to an entire album. my mind is free to wander, and I like reviewing shit. don’t expect these to be “good,” or even to totally make sense. sometimes I take notes while I walk, sometimes I don’t.

album: Turnstile – NEVER ENOUGH (2025)

punk rock is a genre that inherently and reflexively resents its own popularity. punk comes from a place of opposition – a challenge to the dominant and oppressive hegemony of the mainstream. so there’s going to be natural tension when punk finds its way to the mainstream. “selling out” was the cardinal sin of the 90s, also paradoxically the secret goal of basically every band. just ask Jawbreaker who were the whiniest twats about selling out, but still signed with a major anyway because the offer was just too good. the cognitive dissonance of it all pretty much melted everyone in the band’s brain. as I don’t really care for Jawbreaker, it’s all pretty amusing to me.

the lesson is: unfortunately cred don’t pay the rent. and this is also why the aesthetic of punk is so loud, so noisy, and frequently so off-putting. you gotta keep out the poseurs. when the Bosstones broke big after appearing in Clueless and releasing “The Impression that I Get,” apparently the entire scene was like – good for them! these guys are real ones and deserve it. it’s just the culture catching up to what a small subset already knows. that’s probably what’s happening with Turnstile.

that’s why I’m so happy Turnstile was on SNL last week. I keep thinking back to being in Mike Frost’s car as a freshman and hearing Mustard Plug and thinking – oh god, whatever the fuck this is, I need more! it was a door to a world I didn’t know existed but that I fell in love with immediately.

seeing a hardcore band on one of the last pillars of monoculture that still exists is, I hope, transformative for some kid who lives in Nebraska or North Dakota or South Carolina who had no idea you could play music like this. and after listening to this whole album again for the first time in months, the fact that Turnstile chose “Birds” as their first song is that much fucking cooler. that one probably goes the hardest and I fucking love them so much for planting their flag in the sand with it. I’ve watched that performance at least 10 times now.

for a certain personality type, punk/ska/hardcore rewires your brain and reorients your entire worldview. it’s hard to picture an alternate version of myself, but I like this one a lot. it’s also possible I’m on consistent medication now and my brain is a little less topsy-turvy, which is a welcome relief.

I was talking to a friend at a concert recently who told me he thought the new Linda Lindas album sucked. this took me aback because I really, really liked it. sidenote: I listened to their entire new one last weekend and was going to write about it, but came home and my daughter and I watched Weekend at Bernie’s instead. I regret nothing about this choice. but I also told him I’m fully in the bag for The Linda Lindas. why wouldn’t I be? young kids making really good punk rock that I can point to for my own girls and be like, “see? you can be fucking anything you want!” also, the album rips! it goes hard, it’s got cool ballads in Spanish, and it’s all experimental as fuck.

I used to hate when bands got experimental, like on blink-182’s self-titled. but young people are necessarily much dumber. as Gorilla Monsoon used to say, “there’s no substitute for experience.” so at the age of 45, I appreciate hearing the band try to grow and change. fwiw, I wrote almost verbatim this exact note down while Turnstile was playing “LOOK OUT FOR ME.”

SEEIN’ STARS reminds me of a combo of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and, weirdly, Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night.”

I could, and will, listen to this album many times. I suspect (and hope) that Turnstile’s mainstream attention will cause that thought in a lot of people, too.

rating: four stars