Photo Credit: Aron Klein & Bartholomew Cubbins
Anyone discovering the music of Thirty Seconds to Mars (Jared and Shannon Leto) for the first time via their newest LP It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day, will probably dismiss the project as a vanity project headed up by an A-lister running out of ideas of how to spend their ample cash. But the band’s quarter-century existence – including many tours, promotional cycles, countless music videos, and six full-length albums – suggests otherwise. The band’s history and the ambition of their best work (which includes 2002’s otherworldly self-titled concept album about the hardships of the human experience) suggest a group with a deep commitment to creating music, and an innate understanding of the power such music can hold.
All of this makes it more than a little disappointing that the band’s sixth effort is so lackluster and so low on original ideas. Opener “Stuck” begins with edgeless synth-pop that recalls the Jonas Brothers’ so-so post-reunion output. For all of Leto’s attempts to capture ecstasy in his cries of “It’s the way you move,” he ultimately just sounds bored. By the time the song descends into repetitions of “Ram-dam, da-da-da,” it’s clear the band is largely working on auto-pilot.
On “Seasons” – which features a lot of jarring pitched-up vocals – the Letos attempt to make a somewhat more definitive statement, but the end result is an endless litany of clichés about people coming and going, staying put rain or shine, and going round and round. “Love These Days” hints vaguely at cutting-edge commentary, but in the end never hones in on a specific target, leaving us hopeless to decode lines like, “Kinda f*cked up and fake // What we call love these days.”
At the very least, there is a degree of sonic variety across It’s The End of The Worlds‘ 33 minutes, but unfortunately none of the band’s various departures pan out particularly well. “Life is Beautiful” is probably the LP’s least successful experimental venture. The track sees Leto regrettably attempting to rap-sing over dated EDM arrangements. The closer “Lost These Days” proves to be a similar head-scratcher – beginning with folk-style finger-picked guitar before transitioning into overbearing trip-hop. There’s a definite sense of a band throwing everything at the wall, desperately hoping something will stick. The Letos’ attempts at introspection reliably fall flat on their newest offering. “Midnight Prayer” offers yet more empty clichés (“the walls are closing in” // “jump in too deep”), while “World On Fire”’s lyrics read as though they were directly taken from the infamous subreddit ‘I Am 14 And This Is Deep’ (“If we change the way we look at life // The life we look at changes”).
“Get Up Kid” might just be the LP’s most promising and most frustrating cut. The song’s sonic pallet – which sounds like it belongs in a mid-2000s rom-com – may feel unoriginal, but it proves a better foundation for the band’s musings than that on most other songs here. There are hints of deeper and darker themes here (“Some nights I don’t ever wanna live like this”), and there’s potential for an anthemic sing-a-long chorus (“Get up, kid, don’t give in”). But in the end, the song plods along at a mid-tempo pace, Leto’s vocals get washed out and clichés become predominant. The Letos clearly have more they feel they want to say as a band, it’s a shame they can’t find a more effective way to communicate it.
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