The latest album from Icarus Phoenix “I Should Have Known the Things You Never Said” is a tattered journal page, creased and dog-eared from folding and refolding—the words bleed into the margins. It is messy and beautiful in this kind of lyrical introspection that will make one scream, cry, and maybe even laugh a little.
Songwriting with Drew Danburry masters the subtle weaving of strands on divorce, co-parenting, and identity crises into a tapestry deeply personal yet universally relatable. The music itself is a smoldering fire of guitar-driven rock and ambient noise swirling together in a maelstrom of emotions. It’s the sound that crawls under your skin and doesn’t let go, like that tattoo you didn’t know you needed. Drums from Eli Sims that pump like a heartbeat; most texture, most depth, comes courtesy of Leena Rhodes’s guitar work; the bass lines of Brendan Russell are what glue it all together.
But probably what really lets this album rise head and shoulders above the competition is its willingness to gaze into the darkness with full-frontal vision. Danburry’s lyrics are something akin to a series of Polaroids, each capturing a moment in time, a feeling, a thought. They’re fragmented, impressionistic—and utterly compelling. He doesn’t fear to get messy, to explore complexities of human emotion, or to find beauty within brokenness. Producer Jed Jones really has to be applauded for getting the best out of the band, and guest appearances by Jake Bellows, Justin Pacheco, Andrew Young, Chaz Prymek, and Rocky Cordray add welcome depth and variety.
It’s as if the album were speaking to you, at one and the same time, in tones that are at once intimate and expansive. Like when you’re sitting on the porch with a close friend, watching the sun begin to set behind the farthest hills, and talking about things that matter. It’s like. well, really, it’s like nothing else.
These themes of rebuilding and redemption come rather opportune. When we are constantly bombarded with positivities of ‘you can do it’ and self-empowerment, it’s refreshing to hear an album that tells it’s okay not to be okay in the dark. Those things that tell us healing is a process and not a destination—sometimes the best way to move on is to look back, right on time.
Basically, “I Should Have Known the Things You Never Said” does what one needs an album to do: makes one feel seen, heard, and maybe a little healed. It’s proof that music can soothe the soul, be a way of processing the intricacies of feelings, and how to become light again.
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