All of Us Flames

The third installment of a trilogy that began in 2018 with the transformative road-trip opus , sees deliver a disarming and defining set of punk-kissed heartland indie rock songs that give a bullhorn to marginalized voices. The combustive "Train Comes Through" sets the table with grim determination: "It's a quiet night on Main Street where the poisoned water runs/It'll never be the same street when the time appointed comes." As the wheels turn, it evolves into a galvanizing, -esque call to arms that eschews the ' signatory, down-on-his-luck Jersey boy for an exhausted and defiant Jewish trans woman, and it hits hard. The slow-burning "Forever in Sunset" follows suit, pairing beating-heart percussion, glitchy electronics, and lovers-on-the-run imagery before launching into the kind of widescreen sonic majesty that induces a full-body high. 's so-called "flames" are radiant to their detriment, a close-knit community of outcasts and envelope-pushers for whom otherness is both a bull's-eye and a virtue. That message of fraught unity is conveyed in earnest on the album's spare finale, "Come Close," a wee-hours-of-the-morning ballad with spectral strands of the broken grandeur of 's "Rock and Roll Suicide" and 's "Midnight Radio." Whether it's a nod of recognition and a helpful hand ("Throne") or a brief dalliance in the moonlight ("Dressed in Black"), ' mission statement is one of resistance, inclusion, and the healing power of finding and protecting your tribe. ~ James Christopher Monger