The Ex: If Your Mirror Breaks

On the jagged proto-punk assault of The Evidence, Arnold de Boer claims that “If everybody’s been in love / They would treat everyone differently”… that they would “Look at everyone differently”, and that the prize of love and life should be realised. It’s The Ex exploring the aspects of life we take for granted the most. The Ex has always held a talent for the truth, and in this case, it may just be the sharpest observation the Dutch veterans have ever made.  

The same mantra as John Peel’s claim about the The Fall being “always different, always the same”, The Ex is a band that you can simply trust. No chinks in the armour. No ‘difficult second album’ or ‘meandering fifth release’ – their latest as good as their last, and If Your Mirror Breaks doesn’t buck the trend.

Like every encounter with the The Ex, their music needs time, and in a world where most people fail to use it wisely, while one could consider their beautiful brand of noise not fit these times, in true polemic fashion, there isn’t a better time for a band like the Amsterdam staples to reaffirm their mark.

Pulling apart the book of Walt Whitman, Beat Beat Drums begins as its title suggests. Katherina Bornefeld’s marching band-like drum patterns conjuring up hypnotic energy, and flanked by Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor’s crunching guitars, it’s like a metal structure on the verge of collapse.

In true fashion, The Ex illuminate the dread of these times, with climate change in their ire on the metal-on-bone racket of Monday Song. Then there’s the thunderclap of sound and turbulent rhythms on The Loss and In the Rain, which continue to see The Ex sunken in gloom – the residue from 27 Passports trickling into these songs, strengthening the bond between both it and If Your Mirror Breaks.  

Not to be mistaken for a play on Mercury Rev’s Spiders and Flies, on Spider and Fly, de Boer delivers a line that is like a slogan that crystalises The Ex’s mission statement (“This song is to state what needs to be done”). It may just go on to be a fan favourite.

Elsewhere, with the patient build-up of flickering guitars and steady rhythms, Circuit Breaker sees de Boer’s abrasiveness drowned out by contemplation (“What could I keep inside / So I don’t have to live like a rat and die”). The effects, cross pollinating with the themes that feature on The Apartment Block – an open-handed swipe at gentrification and the crippling costs that erode the idea of sustaining a balanced life in metropolitan areas all across the world, de Boer mixes humour with scorn (“When I grow up I want to be an apartment block”).

These same themes haunt the motorik centrepiece, Wheel. The song that defines If Your Mirror Breaks, and as Bornefeld sings, “The old has lost its grip / Reality is shifting / There is no escaping … Your destiny is in your own hands”, The Ex masterfully expose the resistance that makes them what they are. That “beat beat drum”, completely their own, and despite the future looking as grim as it’s ever been, The Ex will keep marching to it, rain, hail or shine.

If Your Mirror Breaks is out now via E & X Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.