Scott McCloud: Make It To Forever

Scott McCloud writes the kind of songs that when they hit, they hit. Leader of Girls Against Boys, who hybridised post-punk and post-hardcore into something brutal, sexy, grimy and incongruously danceable, the New York-based four-piece have influenced a generation of underground artists since their landmark 1993 release, Venus Luxure No .1 Baby.

Following Girls Against Boys, McCloud has plied his trade for the devoted few, led by his understated Paramount Styles project, which has seen the Vienna-based songwriter spawn three excellent albums. Make It To Forever is McCloud’s first release under his own name, and following Soulside’s 2022 clarion call, A Brief Moment in the Sun, and Agrio’s string of EPs throughout this decade, he provides a series of slow burners that grow stronger with each listen.

Speaking in the lead up to the release of Make It To Forever, McCloud spoke of a “dream-like” moment that “epitomised a moment in time”, in reference to a Girls Against Boys show in Athens, Greece, which subsequently inspired him to record the album there with Dimitris Dimitriades at Zero Gravity studios.

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It’s this time travel that stitches together much of Make It To Forever. “Alienating and yet comforting,” as McCloud explained in the press release, and it’s this feeling that provides the vital through line to these songs. Sonically, Make It To Forever is a victory lap. McCloud echoes his past, and while thematically relationships are at the album’s core, his stories are told through a lens of clarity.

The bare bones of eponymous opening song, a taster for what’s to come, as McCloud laments life with his sing-speak burr yawning through the speakers (“My darling, my love / Dancing our lives away / It’s sickening how we play / I Might need me some of your light”). Elsewhere, the acoustic-led Down Through the Stars sees McCloud cutting through the darkness of empty rooms, while Skin of My Tea sounds like something written in the same dusty corners as Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

The scope widens on Moonlight Stagedive and I’ve Got Devotion – the former, a broken post-hardcore dirge that ploughs through the terrains of Girls Against Boys, led by a broody saxophone that spits civic vitality between the paint-deprived walls of a rock bar (“Didn’t I treat you right… Isn’t it classical…”).

With a subtle string section, Abandoned In Flames sees McCloud exploring past relationships. Facets of life we all relate to, but like McCloud has always done, there’s a sinister undercurrent at play (“You should have died when you was famous / You should have died when you was lovely”). Sonically, Come Around mines the same seam, as a soft bedding of sound cushions a story of an embryonic encounter built on the old world’s unhurried nature (a scenario hard to picture these days).

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Spaceship is also a beautiful mediation of the past. McCloud, presenting a panoramic view of his life (“Once I had a thought that was overrated…Once I had a though I might need you now”). It’s almost an antitheses to Paramount Styles’ The Girls of Prague. Then there’s Hold Me Tight. Using his uncanny skill of garnering more from less, McCloud is one of the few songwriters who spits and shapes verses and choruses through repetitious wordplay, and, as always, it hits clear emotional frequencies.

Amid stirring guitar and organ echoes, Staring at Yourself sees McCloud parting with a line that Mark Eitzel would be of (“The world designed you well, you’re one in a million I can tell”). And while he emphatically closes the curtains on Make It To Forever here, it’s penultimate song, Somewhereness, that reaches the album’s heart. Writing from a point of acceptance (“I’ve been sleeping by the side of the road / Took a chance as we all know”), it’s a message that embodies these songs. Someone who’s taken a chance at life and let the chips fall where they fall. There’s a beauty in that, and despite the great uncertainty of these times, on Make It To Forever, McCloud shows us that life can still be beautiful in brief moments. We just have to know where to look for them.

Make It To Forever is out now via God Unknown Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.