Joan of Arc 'Tim Melina Theo Bobby': The 'last album' sounds like a farewell that you never want to end
'Tim Melina Theo Bobby’, the last album of Joan of Arc, marks the ending for the band which started in 1995. ‘Tim Melina Theo Bobby' of Joan of Arc, set to release on December 4, sounds like a conclusion which hints towards a future while also summarizing the band’s long walk, a fallout in between, a ‘Destiny Revision’, and more. For Indie lovers, Joan of Arc has been a trusted transport of feelings for two decades... a journey of Indie, Rock, folk, experimental instrumentals, post-rock, the list is endless. Their albums seem to always blur ‘The Gap’ of where one ends and where one is ‘Eventually All At Once’.
So when you start listening to ‘Tim Melina Theo Bobby’, an album written and performed by band members Melina Ausikaitis, Bobby Burg, Theo Katsaounis, and Tim Kinsella, you don’t know what the band’s approach will be. But as soon as ‘Destiny Revision’ starts, the familiar Joan of Arc which can be traced back to their early albums, ‘A Portable Model Of’ (1997) and ‘How Memory Works’ (1998), the nostalgic yearning of past accompanied with electronic beats and soothing guitar strums, sounds somewhat like a farewell that you don’t want to end, where the video rolls a collage of the band’s journey and the chorus says, “let go, let go, let go, revising my destiny”.
But what if we don’t want to? Speaking of the song, Tim Kinsella shared, “'Destiny Revision’ was a personal song when it was written a couple of years ago, about winging it when your life fails to play out as you'd imagined. Unfortunately, that simple sentiment now has a much more expansive and darker resonance as all of us in America face a fascist administration using the pandemic as an opportunity to consolidate power, and we all struggle to imagine our futures.”
Another unique track of the ten-track album which deserves a special mention is rock-inspired ‘Rising Horizon’ where a woman is groaning in the background which is echoed with a beastly growl and Melina’s ‘Horizon’ blends with the instrumentals in a way that you find yourself with the vocalist searching for the ‘rising horizon’ while the grunge and growl continue at the background.
When a band continues their journey for two decades, you don’t necessarily expect them to sound exactly the same as they started and Joan of Arc has managed to strike an odd balance of the old and new where ‘Tim Melina Theo Bobby’ pays tribute to their 25 years of sailing together, finding new heights of artistry and the final goodbye which is ‘The Dawn of Something’. A particular song has also managed to acknowledge the band’s criticism with a unique approach. The last track of the album ‘Upside Down Bottomless Pit’, a banger, can take Joan of Arc fans to a certain negative review published in 2000 where their ‘Live in Chicago, 1999’ album was called ‘abysmal’, a ‘bottomless’, ‘fathomless’ or ‘infinite’ depth of horrible. In ‘Upside Down Bottomless Pit’, Tim whispers, “There’s no bleachers, there’s no sidelines, there’s no out of bounds.”
Joan of Arc may finally bid goodbye as a band but their legacy is something they are leaving behind, a unique blend of post-rock, old Indie music, and experimental electronic beats, something the band has been deemed for. In a tribute to the band, writer/poet Hanif Abdurraqib wrote, “Musicians owe growth to themselves, they owe exploration, and excitement, and eager noise-making to themselves. Whatever fans get out of that, at the end of the day, is something we should all be grateful for. And in the case of Joan of Arc, we got over two decades of it. And I will always get to tell people that I was around for some of it. That I defied time and responsibilities and drove into a night that this band I loved was on the other side of.”
The final album is scheduled to release on December 4 via Joyful Noise Recordings.