Umphrey’s McGee – Similar Skin (Album Review)

[rating=8.00]

For their eighth studio release, Umphrey’s McGee set out to make a rock and roll album. Similar Skin sounds huge and clean and finds the band locked into some of their heavier material. It’s the most intense album they’ve released yet, the result of a more focused approach.  Umphrey’s has never fallen into the hackneyed trap of playing great shows but making mediocre albums. Still, most listeners experience them in the live setting, so that frame of reference is unavoidable. But Similar Skin is not to be taken lightly, for it shows what Umphrey’s is capable of when they have a plan and stick to it.

Calling Similar Skin a “rock and roll” album is relative. Though the ideas are concise by the band’s standards, it’s still a deeply emotional and complicated album, and disarmingly heavy at times. “Educated Guess” is a constantly changing prog workout that finds bottom-heavy riffs colliding with sprightly, breakneck lyrical sections. Guitarist Jake Cinninger has two new songs see the light of day here, and the influence of TOOL and metal in general is undeniable. “Hindsight”, in particular, is a slinky, writhing ghost of metaphysical sludge and pummeling riffs that is as dark as Umphrey’s gets. “Similar Skin” mines and combines a few of the band’s favorite live improvisations to form a roiling, percussive, vaguely psychedelic quagmire of inevitability shot up with churning guitars. The bouncy “No Diablo” seems a bit out of place among these monoliths, but it’s a mild left turn, and catchy one at that.

As always, the majority of the focus is on the songs and voice of Brendan Bayliss. His lyrics have often been couched in the smoky style of an armchair philosopher, but on Similar Skin he’s as blunt as he gets. Album opener “The Linear” explodes into one of many studied guitar solos that dot the album, but it also initiates a thread of musical power and meaningful lyrics that tie the album together. Songs like “Hourglass”, “Cut the Cable”, and the cathartic “Puppet String”, which forms the delectable center of the album, are variously about how we are spending our limited time on Earth, the things we do and say, and how we’ll be remembered.

The final composition, “Bridgeless”, is a fan favorite that perfectly combines the emotional and proggy sides of the band. It is done great justice here, performed mostly to the letter as it has been over the years, save a few dramatic atmospheric changes in a couple of spots. Featuring some of the strongest songs in the band’s gigantic catalog and showcasing their muscular side, Similar Skin is Umphrey’s McGee’s most timely and relevant release yet.