Burnout Days: Flipturn

Burnout Days, the third studio album from indie-rock outfit Flipturn, takes a softer and more pop-leaning direction than their earlier ventures, ultimately lending itself toward a more middling sound and subdued rhythm.

With founding members Dillon Basse (vocals), Tristan Duncan (guitar) and Madeline Jarman (bass), Flipturn found national prominence with their 2022 album, Shadowglow, that, while engaging with the staples of 2010s indie rock, took on a more synth-based foundation in order to elevate it sound.

Yet, with Burnout Days, the group disappointingly has not progressed from much of the flat instrumentation and underbaked lyricism that limited the potency of their first projects.

Burnout Days centers around themes of youthful apathy, exploring the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood.

With “Juno”, the album starts out strong, showcasing the band’s typical brawny rhythm and cloudy synth-play. The albums second track, “Rodeo Clown”, is the first that truly delves into the album’s lyrical themes, utilizing fuzz and its psychedelic leanings to hook the listener.

However, by the end of “Inner Wave”, the third song on the album, the band has shown basically everything in its arsenal, rehashing and drawing forth more of this same material for the rest of its 43-minute runtime. 

While songs such as “Right?” put forward interesting lyrical themes (in this case the drawbacks of a people-pleasing attitude and the manipulative and abusive relationships that result), the instrumentation never truly advances beyond what is displayed on “Inner Wave”. Ultimately, the record seems to gradually lose its dynamic and, by the time it reaches its fifth track, “Moonrocks”, degrade into a tentative wandering.

At times, this sonic meandering can benefit indie groups greatly (see Sonic Youth), but, in the case of Burnout Days, Flipturn’s definition of sound is not strong enough to overcome its shortcomings.

The band’s underbaked songwriting, which was certainly present on their earlier projects, again plagues the group on their new album. “Tides”, the ninth song on the album, is composed mostly of bland bridges and choruses set to a plucking guitar rhythm. On the two verses that are present, at the beginning of the song, the band sings such inane lyrics as “Trying out treason / For no good reason, really / Just couldn't let the chance slip past”. 

While Indie Rock, as a genre, is not necessarily dependent upon its songwriting, Flipturn, insofar as their instrumentals often fail to create the distinct atmosphere that is vital to their sound, are especially harmed by these defects.

Burnout Days is certainly not without its strengths, however. On “Window”, the seventh track on the album, the band rears its head again; its use of subdued rock influences and softer drums interplay perfectly with its folk-leaning vocals.  

Yet the project suffers from its seemingly inability to fully commit to this direction. While it cannot be called a bona-fide Indie Pop project, its lowest moments come in its flirting with that sort of sound, confining the group to a blandness of sound that does not flatter its most shining abilities.

Ultimately, Burnout Days is a solid project taken on its own terms but, when put into the context of Flipturn’s musical development, falls short of a truly notable advancement in their sound.