Album Review: New Design – ‘Keepsake’
Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
At the end of November 2024, Ontario’s New Design put out their first new song in over four years. The release of “Nowhere But Somewhere” was a surprise, and it came with no statement from the band or their label, but it was a welcome surprise. The single carried all the hallmarks of New Design’s sound: sparkling, twinkly arpeggios that wind into tiny, math-rock-inflected constellations; a soaring, anthemic hook sent skyward like a prayer, underscored by triumphant gang vocals; and a moody, atmospheric sway that suggests the clear influence of emo-leaning post-rock projects like The Appleseed Cast and Moving Mountains.
In April, the band announced Keepsake, their sophomore LP–their first full-length LP since Far from Home in 2015, following the twin EPs Where I Need to Be in 2019 and What Was Left Unsaid in 2020. Along with the announcement, they dropped the title track. The song “Keepsake,” which opens side B of the record, is an eerier, knottier track than most New Design material, receding into the dark every time the band telegraphs a crescendo. It doesn’t follow the typical verse/chorus structure; instead, the song just pushes outward in all directions, the lyric “this keepsake is all I own” recurring, mostly relegated to the back of the mix, anchoring the song. If “Nowhere But Somewhere” was a sign of life, “Keepsake” is a flexing of New Design’s muscles.
Most of Keepsake falls between these two poles, incorporating elements of each. These songs are uniformly the catchiest of New Design’s career, even as they tend to eschew linear songwriting in favor of more complex and unorthodox structures, and most of the pathos comes not from the voice but from the guitar work. In keeping with the band’s post-rock tendencies, the guitars are often pushed to the front of the mix, demanding attention without distracting from the vocal delivery or melody; the effect is to allow each crescendo to hit with full force. A song like “I Will Love You Always,” for example, draws its power from the way the guitars cut loose during the bridge in a solo that erupts from its mantra-like hook. The windchime lick that crops up throughout the verses of “Wish” foreshadows the oceanic tremolo riffs that spike the track’s levels.
There are still those quick dopamine hits, though. The open-hearted emo of “While There’s Still Sunlight” calls to mind Prawn or Deer Leap, and “Flicker” is built off towering peaks and valleys, employing gang vocals in a way reminiscent of the more straightforward cuts off Adjy’s Idyll Opus. “Slow Down” strikes a neat balance between the band’s two modes, delivering cathartic vocal runs and guitar fireworks in equal measure, culminating in the album’s most animated moment, a belted chorus straining for the spotlight against a titanic, wailing riff.
“Slow Down” perfectly sets up the lush, slowburning “Stay Awake.” Beginning with an entreaty to “stay up with me,” the closing track not only builds off the momentum of “Slow Down” but also brings that song’s lyrical conceit full circle; both share the lyric “this is everything we wanted,” but on “Slow Down,” that knowledge is “not enough to go on.” It captures the sentiment the band shared when they explained the significance of the album title: “Keepsake is about a yearning for something once lost that will never be whole again. It tells a story about holding onto what’s left of a memory, longing, and regret.”
On “Stay Awake,” though, that regret is tempered by the clarity of hindsight, namedropping their EP What Was Left Unsaid and flipping “I’ve Never Seen the Ocean” from Far from Home into an acknowledgement of how far they’ve come: “I’ve never seen the ocean / quite so clearly until now.” It might’ve taken a decade, but New Design finally sounds like they’re done fighting the tide. They’ve made their peace, and they ended up right where they need to be.
Disappointing / Average/ Good / Great / Phenomenal
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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