Algernon Cadwallader - Trying Not To Have A Thought (Album Review)
Thursday, 18 September 2025
Written by Tom Morgan
Photo: Scott Troyan
As the Boss once sang: maybe everything that dies some day comes back. We are haunted by recursions and revivals. In music, this has manifested largely as defunct acts rarely staying dead. Streaming technology means that we no longer consume art in a perpetual present, meaning that bands of the past are, essentially, as alive today as any active band.
Beloved Midwest emo act Algernon Cadwallader initially split in 2012 before reuniting a decade later. Following a succession of tours, they’re back with a new album on a new label: the consistently excellent Saddle Creek Records.
Broadly, the endearing ‘Trying Not To Have A Thought’ feels like they never went away, even if something surprising has been prominently thrown into the mix.
A pointed sense of weltschmerz (the pain that comes with knowing a better world is possible) courses through these 11 new tracks.
Nowhere is this more bluntly expressed than on Revelation 420, which finds vocalist Peter Helmis cry “I hate the USA”. You’ve Always Been Here attacks the attention economy: “You think you can turn it on and turn it off / but you keep on turning.” Million Dollars eviscerates the heartless builders of hostile architecture: “Those rocks were really big / we should have dropped them on your head.”
Combined with their signature bouncy tempos and typically inventive work from guitarist Joe Reinhart, Algernon Cadwallader’s return is as heartfelt as ever, but it thrums with an even deeper sense of melancholy, one that many of us can relate to in these troubled times.
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