ADVERTISEMENT - ESCORTS

“I’m no fool/and I ain’t never gonna be nobody’s cop”] creating a confusing scene which is as self-implicating as it is critical—if there is a mortal affliction at play here, it is the hopelessness of love itself, not any particular player involved. “Where is My Baby?” launches the listener out of the apartment and into the midnight streets, following a foolishly optimistic character as he stumbles after an elusive love interest with a “smile like lemonade,” only for him to tumble to an untimely end in the shallows of the Hudson River. Elsewhere, naïve adolescents conjure portals into Hell (“Stupid Boys”) and bleary-eyed party-casualties rock themselves into the comfort of sleep before the comedown has a chance to kick in (“Eyes of the Night”). Lest the city become overbearing, the penultimate track “Point Reyes” offers a sliver of relief, waxing upon images of nostalgic car rides along the coast, conjuring the childlike smell of leather as if it were a type of vaguely perverted Proustian madeleine. The relief is fleeting though, and always in the rear-view mirror—at heart, Escorts entertains no hope of a lasting escape from the overwhelming flow of day-to-day life. Sonically, Escorts finds Advertisement breaking significant new ground. Heavy dance rhythms dominate: “Dancing Scrooge” lays out a collage of stadium-sized harmonies and “Miss You”-era Stones saxophone wails over a house-inspired four-to-the-floor beat, while “Where is My Baby?” cleverly juxtaposes shrill funk guitars and naïve recorder melodies against throbbing, Suicide-adjacent hardware electronics. The band’s emotional landscape has darkened considerably, erecting walls of charmingly melancholic fog. “Eat Your Heart Out” peddles a Suede-esque vampiric drawl over contorted goth progressions, while “Point Reyes” evokes the feeling of a cherry-red Mustang driving off a sea-side cliff in slow motion, playing considered and sparse acoustic guitar lines against washed-out synths. “Eyes of the Night” carries this overriding sense of minimal, chemical-sapped bleakness to its logical conclusion, accelerating beautifully simple piano and saxophone lines towards an almost comically cathartic, bull-in-a-china-shop “Champagne Supernova” style ending. Advertisement smartly avoids drifting into melodrama, however. If “Eyes of the Night” brings Escorts’ A-side to an overtly severe coda, B-side opener “Only the Prophets” releases the tension, falling back into streamlined, Hollywood-brut riffs and phaser-kissed sneers with a sign of relief. The band’s wry sense of humor saves Escorts from fully committing to its darkest promises, constantly undercutting any sense of overt emotional sincerity with subtle, fourth-wall-breaking winks to the listener. With Escorts, Advertisement provides a convincing argument for guitar-driven rock’s continued ability to reflect the maddening incoherency of the world around us. Moving with a cadence which is at once both tragic and lighthearted, melancholic and laughable, Advertisement confront the delirium of modern life and twist it into something subtly charming. At heart, Escorts is a reminder that the most beautiful aspects of life are also the most disappointing, the most sensible course of action often the most stupid. In Advertisement’s world, only the fool makes the rules—to that end, the only recourse is to lean in.