On March 13, 2020,
Daniel Armbruster's alternative rock outfit
Joywave issued their excellent third full-length,
Possession. A few days later, COVID-19 put the world on lockdown, halting promotion and effectively snuffing out the album cycle. In a lemons-to-lemonade situation,
Armbruster experienced a creative burst, which became the band's insightful fourth set,
Cleanse. Taking the (cautiously) optimistic route in the face of ongoing global unrest and a prolonged pandemic at the time of release, he balances that measured positivity and self-reflection with
Joywave's usual existential anxiety and tongue-in-cheek observations of the outside world. The result is a mature and melodic work, one that's both as catchy as anything they've done in the past and softens their typical edge for a more soothing and encouraging experience. Setting the stage with "Pray for the Reboot,"
Armbruster declares, "The world's gone crazy" atop a smooth synth-funk groove, processing the drastic societal changes with desires to "take it back to the start." Later, he expands on his fears with "Inversion," a tense and urgent cautionary tale about a world backsliding into darkness and division. He takes a winking jab at his home country with the guitar-driven "Buy American" -- a biting indictment of toxic positivity, materialism, rampant consumption, and individualism -- and laments the march of time on "Why Would You Want to Be Young Again?" Despite it all,
Armbruster keeps his sights set on that tempered optimism, begging "I don't want to be cynical" on the choir-backed pop gem "Cyn City 2000" and coming to terms with a new reality on the insightful highlight "After Coffee." Later, he frees himself from the bitterness of his past with "We Are All We Need" and yearns for an end to the uncertainty with "Have You Ever Lit a Year On Fire?," hitting rewind with the question, "Do you think we can get it back?/Back before the end?" Taking a step back for a little perspective,
Cleanse presses pause to examine life in the tumultuous early 2020s and offers us a choice of trajectories with wit and heart. ~ Neil Z. Yeung