Never Enough

Openness as a rhythmic decision

Turnstile’s problem after Glow On was formal rather than commercial. The band had already reached audiences that hardcore rarely finds without changing its basic social charge. The question was how much additional space the songs could hold before impact became atmosphere.

Never Enough answers unevenly. Its guitars are wider, its edges are smoother, and textures often remain after a riff has stopped. The playing still depends on compression and release. Daniel Fang’s drums locate the body, Franz Lyons gives the guitar a moving floor, and Brendan Yates keeps most melodies short enough to retain the directness of a crowd response.

The album works when openness changes rhythm: a frequency is cleared, an entrance is delayed, or a low instrument receives enough room to redirect the groove. It drifts when a synth wash or clean guitar functions mainly as evidence that the band has range.

A hardcore record with more rooms

The expansion did not begin here. Glow On had already placed percussion breaks, large melodic choruses, and dream-pop color beside the band’s hardcore attack. On Never Enough, those openings are no longer exceptions. They are the normal conditions under which Turnstile writes, so each added texture has to do more than surprise by appearing.

Yates produced the album, with Will Yip credited for additional production and engineering. The arrangements also use contributors for specific colors: Devonté Hynes plays cello on the title track and “Look Out for Me”; Leland Whitty and Kae Murphy add horns to “Dreaming”; Shabaka Hutchings plays flute on “Sunshower.” The credits read like an expanded palette, but the useful distinction is audible function. A guest part matters when it changes the scale or direction of a song.

That standard explains both the album’s confidence and its unevenness. Turnstile can let a guitar ring or a vocal soften without losing contact because bass and drums keep defining forward motion. When the arrangement widens but the next riff returns to familiar work, the color remains external to the composition.

Four ways the frame expands

Never Enough: The kick anchors the wider frame

The title track spreads guitar across the stereo field and gives Yates more room for a sustained melody. The production is broad, but Fang’s kick remains dry and decisive. Each low hit redraws the distance between voice and guitar, preventing the chorus from floating into generic scale.

The credits identify Yates as producer, with Will Yip providing additional production and engineering. That division fits what the song sounds like: the arrangement reaches outward while the band’s internal rhythmic language remains intact. Added cello from Devonté Hynes widens the color without replacing the pulse.

Sole: Bass carries the chorus

“Sole” is a better test of the album’s polish than its surface suggests. Lyons does not settle for root notes under the bright guitar layers. His bass line pushes through the chorus, adding forward pull where a simpler part would let the arrangement turn weightless.

The song shows how Turnstile’s hardcore background persists as mechanics rather than a genre badge. Guitar can ring and Yates can soften his delivery because bass and drums keep the point of contact exact. The wider mix changes the space around the body; it does not remove the body.

Look Out for Me: Atmosphere changes the form

The first half moves with the compact force expected of the band. The extended second half changes the track’s time scale: rhythm becomes less directive, cello and electronics widen the field, and the warning in Yates’s vocal hangs after the earlier urgency has stopped driving it.

This is more than an ambient outro attached to a rock song. The later passage changes how the first section is remembered, holding its alarm in suspension. It is the album’s clearest example of added space producing a formal consequence rather than advertising range.

Slowdive: Soft focus repeats an established idea

“Slowdive” uses clean guitar, softened vocals, and controlled distance with considerable finish. By this point, however, the album has already made space alter form on “Look Out for Me” and has used guest color more specifically elsewhere. The quieter surface no longer produces the same friction.

The track is not weak because it abandons hardcore impact. It is limited because its contrast is predictable. Atmosphere remains around the song instead of changing its mechanics. That distinction is central to the album: freedom of palette matters only when a new color changes time, pressure, or memory.

What survives the wider palette

The rhythm section preserves Turnstile’s direct physical logic inside wider arrangements. Fang’s kick can anchor a panoramic chorus, while Lyons’s moving bass prevents bright guitar layers from losing forward pull. The band does not need to imitate an earlier hardcore record to retain that contact.

The best added colors have defined jobs. Hynes’s cello extends the low space around “Never Enough” and “Look Out for Me”; the latter uses that space to change its time scale. Yates’s production is effective when a cleared frequency or delayed entrance changes how the next impact lands.

When possibility becomes clutter

Several textures announce possibility without changing the song beneath them. “Slowdive” uses soft focus attractively, but its contrast is already familiar by the time it arrives. “Ceiling” suspends the album for barely more than a minute, but “Seein’ Stars” resumes with a self-contained pulse and arrangement. The pause separates the tracks without altering the second one’s mechanics.

The smoother palette also reduces friction between styles. On Glow On, an open melodic passage could feel like a breach in the band’s attack. Here openness is expected, so it must carry more compositional weight. The album does not always meet that higher burden.

The door stays open

Never Enough treats expansion as a practical problem rather than proof of maturity. Its best songs give space a rhythmic function: the body remains located even when the arrangement spreads outward. The weaker passages confuse available color with changed form. Turnstile’s new range is real; the record is most persuasive when each addition changes pressure, time, or memory.