If the bruised and burnished dark sophistication of The National Honor Society’s debut To All The Glory We Never Had album (May 2020) suited the uncertain lockdown times it was released in, then the Seattle foursomes follow up of To All The Distance Between Us somehow resonates with a more lucid energy that suggests a ‘well, that’s done with’ vibe whilst never really reveling in any swell of overt optimism.

Initially, their is a definitive sense of vibrant that may have been largely missing before with In Your Eyes and Remember The Good Times inviting every new couple to fall in love to their jangly guitar sophistication and crooning, slightly Morrissey inflected vocals, whereas the optimism of the new post pandemic era is also offered through the bouncing melodies of the 60s pop inflections of Jacqueline and When The Lights Go Down.

However, The National Honor Society really excel when their guitars are given free rein to jangle. Here the superlative standout and opening As She Slips Away is joined by It’s Killing Me, The Following and Used To Be to offer riffs that are probably too languid to be described as chiming but certainly ring out like a beautiful song in the deepest, distant darkness.

For those that hanker for their more post-punk sound of yesteryear, there is still much to offer with the dark, jangly indie rock of Control and The Trigger marching through a sense of driven Sprints-style melodic industrialism to provide the balance of a grunt-addled ying to the album’s generally sophisticated yang.

For those of you that are inspired by this wonderful please read the wonderful Stereoembers track by track analysis of this album, here, for further insight on what makes this band tick and this album excel.

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