There is no way to discuss Peripheral Vision without using metaphor. So, to begin, I will say that this album evokes fatigue, aging, excitement, lethargy, and a half-formed wisdom. Undoubtedly, tracks like “New Scream”, “Hello Euphoria”, and “Intrapersonal” address the feeling of aging, and the worry that the experiences that one had as a child will never feel quite as exciting as we grow older. “I’m getting old in the face, every day there’s a new line”, cries singer Austin Getz.
The genius of this album springs from the fact that it serves many purposes. You can listen to this album in rain or shine, and it will still exist as a perfect backdrop. One commenter on the internet remarks on how they feel like the album feels like shirking responsibility for a day and lying for too long in a bed made warm by sunlight filtered through blinds. Feeling too tired or scared to move forward and address the future is a universal human state, and though actually halting one’s life and hiding away may not be, I’d bet most of this album’s listeners have experienced it. I’m sure that whatever age I am when I listen to this album, it will bring me something different. When I started writing this post, I was 22 or 21, and scared of having to find a job out of college. Well, here I am, with a big girl job and an apartment and all new friends. Now, when I hear this album, I think the songwriting serves as a distinct confrontation of the stagnation that can occur as a young adult. Perhaps, when I listen in another year, I’ll hear something else.
“Dizzy on the Comedown” was the track that got me invested in this album, and it squatted on my favorites playlist for a while before I got around to listening to the rest of the album. It’s not like the world hasn’t gotten to know Turnover well enough; this record, specifically, has garnered a lot of attention over time. It was only by fault of my own that my real introduction to this album came in 2021 with “Take My Head”, which became the song of my summer.
One tenet that listeners might realize after sitting through half of the album is that the songs blur together after a while. Though certain songs have their own idiosyncrasies that differentiate them, the overall tone and mood remain the same over the runtime. This may be to the album’s benefit, though. While it may not have created a new genre within alternative/indie rock, it’s undoubtable that a significant amount of the genre’s fans would consider it a required listen.
The album represents the desperate need for change as the speaker/singer feels the world around them changing and the necessity of their maturation, yet acknowledges their shortcomings. “There’s a fever burning up in me”, Getz sings on “Intrapersonal”. This song touches on the difficulty of relinquishing control over the emotions and actions of others, especially when everyone’s feelings are caught up in the interaction like tape from a cassette being unreeled. The chorus states “it’s all intrapersonal”, implying that the emotions that arise when you struggle against a lack of control can perhaps be stopped if one lets go of the reins.
“Cutting My Fingers Off”, the opener, simply must be a breakup song. “I found the picture that we took when we brought in the new year” is the first line in the album. Maybe it’s not intended this way, but denoting the passage of time always makes me consider my relation to that holiday as well. It’s also present in “Si Veo a tu Mama” by Bad Bunny. These two songs will always be on repeat for me around the New Year, when they acknowledge that I’ve gone around the sun another time. With that, of course, I can reflect on what the new year contains for me. Well, this year, it contained a breakup. I won’t get into it too much, but “Cutting My Fingers Off” described my feelings pretty well for the first few weeks of the year.
Finally, we reach some kind of conclusion with the two final tracks. As I’ve already talked a little bit about “Intrapersonal”, “I Would Hate You if I Could” is up next, and it’s maybe one of the more polarizing songs on the album for me. As I’ve noted, Peripheral Vision has been ever-present in my life ever since I first heard it. “I Would Hate You” is a painful song; it discusses loss, growing pains, and the difficulty of being mature in a relationship. “I would hate you/ but I’m not finished yet” is repeated throughout the latter half of the song, maybe signifying that the singer doesn’t want to acknowledge that everything that happened was all there could be in his relationship. On it being polarizing; I think that this song resonates with me less often than the others, as the sentiment it expresses may be a little bit more personal to the singer than the others. It addresses a more specific situation, but when it could apply to the listener’s life, it hits just as hard as any of the others.
On “Intrapersonal”, we hear “Are you a daughter off/ this new insomnia/ my hypochondria…” and, well, I’m not sure about others, but in becoming a young adult, taking charge of my health has been unbelievably tough. I don’t have someone I can just ask about my problems, without going to urgent care or taking some other drastic action. At times it just seems impossible to be both reasonable and healthily concerned about some strange chest pain. Peripheral vision seems like that chest pain, in a way: it’s there, but you’re not sure if what it’s telling you is wrong is really there or if it’s all just “intrapersonal”.
On Peripheral Vision, the loss of a relationship is equated to a loss of holocene innocence. Maybe the hardest part of any personal tragedy is the realization that one has to get back up and keep living despite missing “fingers”, or perhaps what felt like a critical part of their life. Just like moving from the naivete of childhood to the (relative) maturity of adulthood, one must stop focusing on getting by in the present and begin preparing to succeed in the future.
