A Comprehensive Guide to Burning Out is the latest album from Richmond, Virginia-based Madison Turner. Originally released early this year, the record has recently been put out on cassette by our friends Grimalkin Records, with some cool added bonuses too.
As the title suggests, the record focuses on feelings of frustration and weariness, a kind of deep-seated dissatisfaction with the mundanities of daily routines. “I wanted to make [the album] a bit lighthearted, but it really is about burnout,” Turner describes to GayRVA, “and how difficult it can be to keep going when everything is the same, and the same, and the same.”
Not that this is immediately apparent upon hitting the play button. Turner creates a genre-bending melange of spiky pop punk, throaty folk punk, 90s alt-rock and even country, utilizing everything from guitar, drums and keyboard to lap steel, fiddle and trombone. Therefore, despite the subject matter, there’s certainly no lack of energy involved, and many of the songs burn with a cathartic sense of purpose.
‘Sometimes’ is a folk punk song that rattles along in a breathless rush and ‘Our Wild Rage’ follows a similar pattern, Turner delivering her lines with gravelly feeling. ‘Portland, Oregon’ is a pop punk song built on manic fiddle and Turner’s experiences couch surfing across the country, a galloping ode to the joys of making new friends and feeling at home in a new place. “It’s been a stressful stretch of time this past week or so,” Turner sings, “and everything wears down before you know, but this couch in this punk rock house feels like home right now.”
‘Do You Ever Feel Like A Failure?’ is one of many songs on the album that on the surface sounds upbeat, all irrepressible energy and subtle nods to Turner’s precious ska leanings, but dig a little deeper and the lyrics reveal that things are tough. But again things are ultimately redemptive, a reminder that lots of people share feelings, even the negative lonely ones.
maybe we’ve got some things in common
maybe it means nothing at all
(means nothing at all)
at least I guess I feel something
And this sense of redemption is ultimately the overwhelming one. ‘Richmond, Virginia’ is a song about perhaps eventually finding one’s place, a suggestion that the couch surfing days are over, at least for now. “Walking through the rains of Richmond,” Turner sings, “feeling like I might have found a place where I can belong.”
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If the album itself wasn’t enough, Side B of the tape has a special live solo acoustic set from Madison Turner that Nancy Kells recorded on her cell phone and mastered later from a Grimalkin Records’ benefit show for the Virginia Anti-Violence Project on June 16, 2018.
Get A Comprehensive Guide to Burning Out on cassette or digital download from the Grimalkin Records Bandcamp page or the Madison Turner Bandcamp page.
