Twenty One Pilots have always been about music for the people: except for the times when they’re messing with their heads. Since their inception in 2009, there’s always been something to be found between the lines of their music. Fans have seen frontman Tyler Joseph tinker with songwriting and take it from a loose concept in Vessel, to a character in Blurryface, to the narrative and concept album that is Trench. These evolutions have enraptured fans by creating something more than the music, threads to pull to see a bigger picture; pictures thought out and deliberately planned by band members Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree on their new album Scaled and Icy.
Scaled and Icy marks Twenty One Pilots’ first album since 2018’s Trench. With over a year of at-home recording and producing, the 11-track album comes in at a short 37-minute runtime –– their shortest record out of their 6 album discography.
Simply put, it’s hard to follow up a great album. Trench is easily Twenty One Pilots’ opus; it was their leap into the world of concept albums and dually gave listeners a strong sonic experience. Coming up on this album the pilots really had nothing left to prove. Scaled and Icy sends that expectation to the trash. Aside from a few hints towards the concepts of Trench, this album is a foray into uncharted territory for the band. Musically, the project introduces electric guitar onto a Twenty One Pilots album for the first time as well as a high reliance on synth sounds for tracks such as “Choker” and “Never Take It”.
Scaled and Icy explores with both implicit and explicit references the life of an artist through COVID-19, becoming a father, and hinting toward a second character in the concept that was Trench. As it stands now, it becomes unclear how this album fits into the criteria of a concept album. The biggest indicator is the title itself, “Scaled and Icy,” which is an anagram of Clancy is dead; Clancy being the character in the Trench universe.
The album opens up with “Good Day,” a song that is decorated with bright and catchy sounds, served with punch-your-gut lyrics. The track begins with Joseph singing, “I can feel my saturation leaving me slowly.” Through its impossibly happy piano riffs, he continues, “Lost my job, my wife and child.” This makes Scaled and Icy sound bleak and hopeless, but it is more of the opposite. In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Joseph explained how the song is written for a live show, saying, “I wanted this [song] to feel like I was turning lights on.”
Joseph’s narrator in Scaled and Icy is a fluid observer of the world around them before turning introspective. He recognizes the world around him as circumstantial before conceding (“I don’t bother anyone, never make demands…Sooner I can realize that pain is just a middleman,”) that he has a tendency to choose pessimism. He writes about a relationship that has aged (“Fast forward thirteen years now…I’m just worried my loyalty will bore you,”) but he still remains invested in it. If one thing can be said about Joseph, he keeps the abstract succinct on this record, letting the listener decide what they want to interpret. The stories told could be rooted in fact, but are frankly subverted by fresh sounds that are constantly moving as they coax you to listen with their in-your-face nature.
Scaled and Icy’s closing track, “Redecorate” challenges their history to end albums on a somber note. At its heart, “Redecorate” is a delicate, bass heavy song that tangoes the line between rap and spoken word delivery of lyrics. This style of delivery is one that Joseph delivered more throughout this project than any other album, fully committing to giving the listener a taste of his rapping ability over a beat that can go toe to toe with commercial rap beats. When put under the Twenty One Pilots microscope, some of the lyrics (“There was a wonderful structure to the city and it put my cares to rest,”) can be taken as a continuation of Trench’s concept of a character living in a city, and then leaving it. It is also worth noting that the closing track on Trench is “Leave The City,” this weaving together of both closing tracks is one of many hints left behind throughout the album. This duality of interpreting lyrics throughout the entire album will leave avid fans digging and drawing up connections as they pull the thread left behind by Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun.
Scaled and Icy is at face value, the biggest creative risk taken by Twenty One Pilots. Its production value is telling of Joseph’s investment in self-producing most of the duo’s work since Blurryface. The real meat-and-potatoes of this project come in the shape of their branching out into less explored avenues. With electric guitar, legitimate rap songs, samples, and an off pattern closing track. It is hard to predict how faithful Twenty-one pilots fans will react. Regardless, given the time spent by Joseph and Dun on this record, this record is a triumph that marks a maturity that now eclipses their previous albums.
