Review
The old songs arrive louder, cleaner, and still one bad turn from collapse. On “Need Money,” “Doom & Gloom,” and “Powder To The People,” Dance Gavin Dance sharpen the band’s familiar collision of technical guitar, funk-leaning bass, abrupt pivots, and Jon Mess’s feral screams without sanding away its instability. Melodic Magazine calls the record “a powerhouse of an album,” praising its deep-cut-heavy tracklist and the way the performances feel “refreshed rather than copied.”
Andrew Wells is the hinge. Rather than impersonating the singers who preceded him, he gives the catalog a warmer, rougher center: Zware Metalen hears him fully “ontluiken” (“blossom”), while describing the album as “twaalf iteraties angstige chaotische funky post-hardcore.” That tension—precision against panic, nostalgia against reinvention—keeps the third Tree City Sessions from feeling like archival housekeeping. The band sounds practiced enough to make these intricate arrangements seem effortless, but not so polished that the danger disappears. It is a confident retelling of Dance Gavin Dance’s history, with the current lineup making the past feel less fixed than newly volatile.
