The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die at Club Dada

For The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, the next step is salvaging the wreckage and reconstructing it as a brutalist sculpture. The band—whose five members are split between Philadelphia and rural Connecticut—is best known for bringing a hyper-specific authenticity and uplifting collectivism to the wistful guitar plucks and squeaky singing of the early 2010s emo revival. Their fourth album, Illusory Walls, sounds like a grim reincarnation of the band they once were. Written and recorded remotely during the pandemic, it is the band’s first album to prominently employ an outside co-producer (Greg Thomas), and the first to feature just one main guitarist (down from three). It is the most technically proficient and hard-hitting music in their discography, albeit at the cost of their unique intimacy and warmth.

– pitchfork.com