Album review: Waterparks – JINX

Say what you want about Waterparks, but they’re never boring. In recent years, however, it was less their music that was a talking point, than the lack of it. After 2023’s INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, we were told a sequel was forthcoming, which may or may not have been subtitled LOST IN THE PROPERTY.

Then the Houston pop-rock trio cancelled it, with frontman Awsten Knight suggesting at the time “the universe [was] working against the project”, and later telling K! that the headaches in its creation simply weren’t worth it, especially when it effectively felt like a repeat of what they’d already done. “It felt like dragging ourselves through the same obstacles for a reward I felt less invested in,” is how he put it back in April.

Awsten, Geoff Wigington, and Otto Wood’s sixth opus is therefore coming up against a combination of fans disappointed that IP2 was scrapped, the resulting wait for a replacement, and the heightened expectations for the record their heroes decided to upset the applecart for.

JINX should vindicate them. Listening to its 13 tracks, it’s obvious this isn’t a collection Waterparks would have arrived at organically after INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. There were lines of thought and loose ends that would have forced the band into something safe, which is not somewhere they’ve ever sought to be, so a hard refresh was necessary for this mad meta musical of a record to be born.

Speaking of musicals, excellent opening track TELL ME WHY is pure theatricality, with its clever wordplay (‘Woke up in a conference room / Two guys in polyester suits with clipboards say / We’re here to do, your earthly exit interview') and interplay between characters, including blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and composer extraordinaire Danny Elfman, confirming all bets are off when it comes to the rest of the record.

TELL ME WHY’s allusions to scrutiny, both in life and after it, continue on RED GUITAR. It finds Awsten hammily attacking his vocals over an electro throb, examining the heady dreams of a budding musician wanting fame and fortune, and how fanning one’s own flames of belief is sometimes necessary to get you there. ‘The meter is running, can’t imagine what it’s costing / To keep all these superhuman levels of delusion / That all eyes are on me, they tune in like Truman’. Truman is, of course, the character played by Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, in which a man is unwittingly the subject of a globally-viewed reality TV show all about his life.

While Awsten doesn’t think he’s that big (yet), he knows he has ardent followers. On IF LYRICS WERE CONFIDENTIAL, he puts the cat among the pigeons with them, suggesting ‘I hate 50 per cent of our fans, and the other half understands’. It’s a clever lyric, of course, seeing as it puts the onus on the listener to decide which camp they think they fall into, because, let’s face it, no one views themself as the overbearing, territorial stan.

Some might have considered it less clever to make PROWLER the first single, given that its relatively heavy stylings aren’t reflective of the sweeter sonic confections found on its parent album. What it does do, however, is showcase another side of Awsten, or is it another version of him? Are they even the same thing?! Setting that aside, PROWLER is Awsten on vulnerable form, effectively feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Elsewhere, on NO NO NO NO NO and PLAYING MUSIC, you sense we’re on more slightly safer ground, perhaps to anchor things in case some of the more decadent moments, like dreamy pop souffle MIRAGE, should throw listeners for a loop (unlikely, given what established consumers have been served so far.)

“This album is worth every flower in the goddamn galaxy,” Awsten boasted earlier this year. He has to believe that, of course, given the amount of stress JINX’s creation brought about. No album could match that kind of hyperbole, though, but JINX certainly deserves several hundred bouquets for being so singular, so strange, and so deliciously self-indulgent.

Better than therapy? Quite possibly.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: blink-182, As It Is, NOAHFINNCE

JINX is released on July 24 via BMG