The last time I listened to a CD as many times in one day as I’ve listened to “Vessel” from Twenty One Pilots, I think I was in the eighth grade.
It was “Eyes Open” by Snow Patrol and I thought it was the greatest thing to ever be recorded in the history of music. I listened to it on my prehistoric Zune and thought there could never be another CD that would measure up. I’ve obsessively listened to an album very few times since then, but the obsession has officially begun with “Vessel.”

The duo jumped on the scene in 2012 as openers on Fun.’s American tour. They were loud, energetic and unexpected live — three qualities rarely translated in recordings. Somehow, though, Twenty One Pilots has done it.

The collection of songs, many of which are seemingly rooted in a background of mental illness, range from dark and hallowed to light and bubbly. They shouldn’t work together but, by some act of God, they do.  I wish there were a better way to qualify this sound, but doing so is the equivalent of trying to catch a star while standing firmly on the Earth.

Twenty One Pilots, who recently sold out The Firebird, are revolutionary. It’s not explicitly pop, rap, hip-hop or techno, but, at the same time, it’s somehow all of that. It’s the eccentric marriage of retro beats and soul-rattling lyricism wrapped in a tornado of Beastie Boys-style rap and rigidly harmonious hooks.
“Holding on to You” and “Migraine” chronicle the struggle of self vs. self, the most honest representation of this inward battle that modern music might have ever seen.  The sound is full until it’s purposely empty and the interplay between the two is both unexpected and exactly what should happen.
The surface exuberance of the above two is countered in “Car Radio,” with a repetitious backbeat accentuated only by a bleak, monotone voice. The components lie for a dud of a song, but as it picks up, the rawness of the emotion and the pursuit of the better is glaringly clear and poignantly revealed.
Leave it to “Screen” and “Trees” to wind down and fill out the album of misfit songs. Omitting the overpowering synthesizers used throughout so much of the album, these songs comprise the single missing ingredient. They are the quiet underdogs, the melodic scapegoats that harbor an unadulterated sense of emotion without being overtly sentimental.

The album is viscerally riveting and simultaneously befuddling, but it couldn’t have been done in a better way.
The first listen doesn’t do it justice, the words meaningless until the second or third round and the façade of conflicting beats undiscovered until further inspection. “Vessel” is a smash of a first release for any band, but especially one whose subject matter doesn’t revolve around the typical risqué subjects.
Twenty One Pilots’ biography is short and uncomplicated, stating, “Don’t let the fear of unhappiness cripple your pursuit of finding what it is you believe.” It seems they’ve found something to believe in, and now so have listeners, as well. We don’t know how it happened but we should be glad that it did.