X Ambassadors, Orion

I’ve got a bit of a complicated relationship with NY trio X Ambassadors; it’s been kind of an up-and-down thing, to say the least. I’ve been a fan since back before the added the “X” to the band’s name, first hearing their album Litost and falling head over heels for the whole damn thing — especially “Unconsolable” and “Falls”, both of which I still listen to regularly.

Then came the name change, and the band signing to Dan Reynolds’ KIDinaKORNER imprint, and EP Love Songs Drug Songs (which was decent but didn’t quite hold up to Litost, in my mind), and their “first” full-length, VHS. I was little weirded out that the band seemed to want to distance themselves from their previous stuff, but hey, bands don’t like to rest on their laurels, right? I get it.

But for me, VHS was…alright. I dearly, desperately loved (and still love) “Unsteady,” and “Renegades” was a fun song, but a lot of the album just kind of fell flat, to my ears. And then I had the chance to see the band live at an outdoor festival; I was psyched for their set, hoping they’d maybe break out some of the older songs but just happy to finally be able to see them in person. Again, though, they were just okay. Maybe it was the setting? Maybe X Ambassadors just didn’t fare real well in a midday set out in the bright Houston summer sunshine?

Move along a year or three, and hey, here are a few new songs — “Ahead of Myself” grabbed me immediately, and I felt like maybe the band had turned a corner. I looked forward to hearing the new album, Joyful. But then word came that the band had scrapped the album completely and were releasing something totally new, called Orion.

By this point, I was feeling pretty nervous. Was this going to be another bunch of songs that didn’t make me do much more than “eh”? And even it wasn’t bad, would it be something I’d even need to write about here, considering the band’s reach these days? Honestly, I went into the first listen primed for disappointment, ready to pull the headphones back off and walk away.

“Hey Child” hooked me in, thankfully, with Sam Harris’ impressively soulful vocals taking center stage and the whole track seeming to lunge at the sky like a bird trying to escape the ground. It was all about family and brotherhood and hoping the next generation doesn’t make the same mistakes you do.

Then comes the sultry, slinky “Confidence,” which is alluring and seductive in spite of the fact that it’s essentially about uncertainty and second-guessing yourself — it also features a cameo by the excellent K.Flay, who steps in briefly to drop a nice snarl-sung verse before bowing and heading back off-stage. And then there’s gritty, street-level “Quicksand,” with that great stomping rhythm and almost Citizen Cope feel, paired up with grim lyrics about everyday people trying to make it in a world that’s rigged against them. I was feeling pretty good by this point.

Of course, that’s when the band threw a curveball, with funky, brazen “Boom,” which on the initial listen dismantled everything I’d been liking up to then; it actually made me cringe the first time around; with the repeated “boom-boom-boom”, “zoom-zoom-zoom” lines and the bass beneath it, it felt like a gimmick song, y’know? By the third or fourth go-round, though, it’d sucked me in, largely thanks to those jagged, Rapture-esque guitars and the undeniable awesomeness of that rubber-band bassline.

Ironically, it ended up being the next song, “Rule,” that I truly had a hard time with. Musically, it’s fine, all delicate, piano-heavy fragile pop, but lyrically it veers a bit to the creepy side — I’m thinking of the line, “How can I love you / if I can’t rule you?”, in particular, which makes me twitch just a little when I hear it. That said, Harris immediately undercuts it afterwards, when he croons in the chorus, “Rule / over me”.

But hey, they’re not all going to be magic, right? On to the next track, and — oh, wow, here we go. I’d initially been tempted to finish listening and call Orion yet another decent-but-not great pop album, but at the mid-point, I got to “History”, and it blew the doors off of everything beforehand.

From the outside, it doesn’t look like much, I’ll admit, just a countrified bit of acoustic, jangly, folk-pop, just Harris and a guitar. But don’t be fooled — the stripped-down setup cuts away all the unnecessary junk to get to the core of the song, which is a fiery, bitterly raw indictment of a relationship gone wrong. This is what it sounds like when you cut somebody toxic, somebody who’s done you damage, out of your life, and it’s gorgeously elegaic and coldly angry at the same time.

And holy shit, that voice…I’d known Sam Harris could sing — his vocals on “Unsteady,” in particular, damn near make me cry every time — but his vocals here are truly what carry the song and give it the weight, the power it needs to land. He starts off somber, almost resigned, but slowly builds in fury and emotion until he’s howling out the words, and it’s pretty damn amazing. I know “Boom” and “Hey Child” are the official singles off Orion, but “History” is what I play to people when I want them to take a serious listen to this album.

After that, it’s a nice coast to the album’s end, starting with the appropriately defiant “Recover,” which is all about standing back up again after you get knocked down. The music is heavy and rough-edged, with an irresistible beat, subtle, hymn-like keys, and guitars that gouge and scrape at the surface of the song, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

“Wasteland,” for its part, makes another dramatic shift, coming off less like Maroon 5 or Imagine Dragons or anybody even remotely similar and more like vintage Springsteen. It’s a song about coming back home to a Rust Belt, blue-collar town where you grew up, now older and wiser and (hopefully, anyway) more successful, and realizing you don’t really belong there anymore.

Next song “Shadows” is anthemic and upward-looking, packed full of yearning as it soars up into the skies, and that segues into “I Don’t Know How To Pray,” a heartbreakingly honest tune that sees X Ambassadors go full-on gospel. It’s absolutely beautiful, the heartfelt cry of a man on his knees on a bathroom floor, praying for his brother’s life.

The album closer is “Hold You Down,” a slow, almost lovesick song about needing somebody in your life, and while it’s a good song, it feels, well, off somehow, after the crash-stop of “I Don’t Know How To Pray,” which practically begs to be the closing track, ending perfectly and then cycling back around to “Hey Child” without even a hiccup. I’m not sure why the band ordered the songs that way, but part of me wishes they hadn’t…

What’s interesting about Orion as a whole, by the way, is its own wavering from one pole to the other; sometimes it’s absolutely about independence, about standing on your own, cutting loose from people and situations that drag you down (“History”) and being confident enough to leave all the crap behind (“Recover”). But then sometimes it’s flat-out about losing that confidence (“Confidence,” obviously), or being unable to live without somebody (“Hold You Down”).

Which makes sense, really, because that’s what we all face, every day, if you think about it — I know ridiculously few people who are self-assured and ready to go it alone every day of their lives, and I suspect most of them, even, are faking it. We’re human; we struggle, that’s what we do, and a lot of the time we struggle within ourselves. There’s truly nothing more real than that.