I cover “Too Close To Touch” out of pure love. I fell in love with their music and with (now passed) vocalist Keaton Pierce’s artistic philosophy to inhibit the emotional spectrum. I have yet to find an artist since either VRSTY or Issues, who have yet to be reviewed here, that straddles the line between pop and hardcore influence. With enough musical experience, it can easily transcend both genres and reveal color in a greyscale so easily seen for its aesthetic and not for the message behind the music.
Almost two years after the band lost Pierce, Too Close To Touch published unreleased material with him to both honor the memory of their vocalist and announce they would no longer be continuing as a band. As for my personal bias, I won’t be judging any of their musical material based on their actions other than their performances on the albums. No doubt seeing them live would have been something of a culminating milestone for me not just as a music fan, but as a music journalist as well.
Too Close To Touch made their debut with a self-titled EP on Oct. 21, 2014. Released exclusively on digital platforms by Epitaph Records, the band’s eclectic range made one hell of a debut, immediately being picked up for tour by PVRIS and Emarosa. Both bands were immediate successes on Rise Records garnering popularity on tour and in music sales.
With Pierce handling vocal and lyrical responsibilities, bassist Travis Moore, drummer Kenneth Downey, and melodic guitarists Mason Marble and Thomas Kidd, if a band ever had more synergy, they’d achieve mainstream success faster and wouldn’t just take the scene by storm but would put it back on the map. Honestly speaking, Keaton’s vulnerable lyrics paired with Moore’s pop-influenced basslines and layered with Marble and Kidd’s intricately emotive guitar melodies make for a brilliant debut effort that is equally romantic and ambitious.
“The Deep End” is a powerful track of declaration, pleading for one’s loss of self. It’s well-chosen as the initial track. The track’s wonderful layering unfolds like a lotus flower, each note triggering the next melody to unfold and reveal the song’s full bloom. Thematically, the song is about the reliance on external happiness when one is too generous with their time and too trusting, leaving vulnerability and emotions easily accessible for anyone to take advantage of. The unclean bridges both genres, masterfully reaching a hardcore apex repeating the lines, “Hard to wake up whole in an empty bed/Taking its toll sinking me slow instead.” Such vulnerability is heightened as a manifestation of how aggressive the emotional spectrum is.
“Perfect World” is a melancholic revenge track that is cognizant of the genre’s pitfalls as an entirety. Pierce’s opening chorus highlights the frailty of artists who write the songs but the entitlement of such melancholic material as well.
“In a perfect world/You’re crawling back to me/But That’s absurd/ Cause it’ll never happen.” Through the introductory line, it takes a long time for Pierce and the band to remind the audience of the post-hardcore elements the band integrates well. Musically, the band cycles through each melody seamlessly tying power pop and elements of post-hardcore together to make an intriguing fusion carried out through the entirety of the EP.
“Poisons” captures the insecurity when the relativity of the situation meets the insecurity within. The song is vulnerable, using pop synths and beats to further the fragility of emotions gone amok and reigned back by the hardcore elements going as far as leading up to another culminating unclean bridge screamed by Pierce. “We clench our teeth to hide the truth/ our tongues can taste the words they fail to speak/Fail to speak the truth.”
“Won’t You Listen” could not have been a better-assembled closing track for the EP, being the defining track, capturing the aesthetic of the band while exhibiting the band’s talents. The track is a warning to not chase everything that is before us but to ground ourselves in matters of the heart. The band takes it one step further. Pierce’s vocal performance shines, taking a more R&B approach with soulful hooks and solos. Guitars compliment his performance and lead the listener through chord structures that release the tension midway through when Pierce wails. The pitch was perfect and the fusion between both genres once again shines.
I found out about Too Close To Touch over the pandemic when I was discovering who I am today, and Keaton’s voice was a fierce influence. At a time when Tyler Carter (Former Woe is Me and Issues vocalist) had been accused by multiple fans of sexual misconduct, Johnny Craig (Former Dance Gavin Dance, Emarosa, Rain City Drive vocalist) had checked in to rehab and was responding in court to rape allegations, and two years after We Came As Romans vocalist, Kyle Pavone passed as a result of an overdose, I was no longer looking for someone to look up to, but relate to.
In the midst of a pandemic, let alone after, in a time of recovery, there is so much isolation that gnaws away at our social sense of connectedness. A disease ravaged society and all we are looking to do is come back together by means of relativity. Not only did we realize how much it means to have people there for us, but the music acknowledges how important it is for us to have people who we love there for us, a quality>quantity approach. In a recent interview with Keaton’s bandmates, Pierce was a vulnerable and open artist who attempted to reach out to everyone by being as honest about his emotional state as possible. In a world where masking and ingenuity have become ingrained as a norm, it was nice to relate to an artist who not only created as I would but lived his life as he created his art.
It’s often said to never meet your heroes because they will always let you down. Over the pandemic, Too Close To Touch gave me so much to look forward to. I regret not looking into them sooner, because I don’t think I have heard or reviewed a band that I know will be consistently great.
5/5
