Failure ‘The Furthest Thing’ EP Review: third 2018 EP brings group’s ambitious project full circle in advance of full-length October release.

★★★★

Alt-rock trio Failure have been on a mad creative tear this year, with one grand vision: the release of three individual EP’s, to be followed by a full-length (due this October).

Previous releases In The Future and Your Body Will Be showed the group at their angular, anthemic best, and the final EP in the series,The Furthest Thing (out September 14th via Failure Records), closes things in fine fashion.

Opener Find a Way begins with an ominous chiming modulated guitar figure, before things kick into a strident pace, propelled by Ken Andrews granulated croon, eventually culminating into a hook-laden crunchy chorus and woozy guitar solo.

Distorted Field’s stop-start delivery is equally infectious, punctuated by distorted bass, popping percussion and percolating synth textures, having them fully live up to their “space rock” descriptors.

The EP (like all previous EP’s and album’s since 1996’s Fantastic Planet) features a moody instrumental “Segue” track (Segue 12 to be exact), and it’s simply gorgeous. Cinematic in scope, full of swirling synths, distorted textures and whirring guitars.

EP closer Heavy and Blind does that patented Failure mix of harmony and dissonance, with ghostly vocals and watery guitar lines, eventually giving way to oceanic soundscapes and layered vocal harmonies.

The band’s ambitious project worked perfectly fine as individual installments, but now that the project is complete (the full album is suitably titled In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing) it’s worth listening to it in its entirety.

Failure releases are always special auditory events meant to be absorbed as a whole, and while that may not be in easy in our culture of digital distractions (which was actually an inspiration for this project, according to guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/lyricist Greg Edwards), it’s a journey worth the effort.

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