Turnstile are taking apart the album that just won them their first Grammys. Never Enough: Versions lands August 28, and the credits card alone is the most unhinged guest list we have seen this year. Elton John next to Dying Fetus. Four Tet next to Angel Du$t. Panda Bear next to Slayyyter.
Those pairings are only the opening argument. The announced roster also runs through Julien Baker, Faye Webster, Porches, A.G. Cook, Floating Points, Mustafa, Dan Deacon, Shabaka, Oklou, Nourished By Time, and Baltimore club originator Rod Lee alongside Irish producer Kettama and trumpeter Brandon Woody. It reads less like a remix package than a map of everything orbiting this band at once: hardcore, ambient techno, club, jazz, hyperpop, and a 78-year-old knight of the realm.
There is a genuine puzzle buried in the credits. The roster runs 23 names deep, but the original Never Enough only holds 14 tracks, a mismatch Stereogum also clocked. So either some songs are getting worked over more than once, or several of these artists are sharing a track, and neither option is the boring one.
Turnstile are calling the record "reimagined." Not remixes, not covers. Which tells you nothing and everything at once, and is probably the point.
The four we are actually losing it over: Alex G, Chanel Beads, Hayley Williams, and Blood Orange. There is no word yet on who is touching which song, but any one of those four could take this record somewhere completely different. Hayley Williams singing a Turnstile song is a different proposition than Dev Hynes rebuilding one from the bassline up, and Alex G is capable of either.
The timing is the part worth sitting with. Never Enough won Best Rock Album at the Grammys in February and "Birds" took Best Metal Performance, the band's first two wins, beating a Best Rock Album field of Deftones, HAIM, Linkin Park, and Yungblud, and a metal category holding Dream Theater, Ghost, Sleep Token, and Spiritbox. Accepting the rock award, frontman Brendan Yates said the community the band found through punk and hardcore gave them "a safe place to swing in the dark and land somewhere beautiful." Most bands would tour a record like that for another year. Turnstile are handing it to 23 people and asking them to break it.
August 28. We will be checking who got what the second it is up.
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