I dearly loved Casey’s 2024 comeback album How To Disappear, and their debut album Love Is Not Enough from 2016 is equally special albeit in an entirely different way that harkens back to one of my favorite albums from the mid-2000’s. Imagine for a moment two brothers separated at birth, adopted and raised by two separate families in different countries oceans apart. They experience different societal and environmental inputs as they grow up and yet somehow end up leading incredibly similar adult lives with a shocking number of similarities.
That is the relationship Casey’s debut album Love Is Not Enough shares with As Cities Burn’s debut album Son I Loved You At Your Darkest (which has long been a crown jewel album of mine). They’re basically the musical equivalent of the infamous Jim Twins— two bands whose ability to bring unsettling intensity, raw vocal power, and brutal breakdowns make them notable post-hardcore acts.
But where both bands set themselves apart is in the softer and more nostalgic moments– like their long-lost brother from the mid-aughts, Casey has an exceptional talent of making heartache and rage sound poetically beautiful, elevating deep-seated feelings of rejection from fearful cries of help into resoundingly powerful declarations of durability and strength. It may not sound like it at a surface level, but Love Is Enough is no doubt an art piece that explores with uncompromising honesty the unique experiences that make us alive.
It’s a celebration of the human condition in a way not many other albums in the genre can claim, a special album from a special band whose ability to make me feel something powerful has been proven time and time again.
Standout Songs: “Bloom”, “Darling”, “Sleep”, “Haze”, “Cavities”
