The Alternate Routes

The Alternate Routes

There’s a certain kind of bittersweet comfort in The Alternate Routes’ music. From the inviting vocal harmonies in their folk-rock singles to the impassioned guitar solos in their slightly heavier jams, they conjure an immediate sense of familiarity and kinship with their audience that makes the intimacy of their lyrics hit that much harder.

Their performance at The Pour House last Thursday delivered every bit of the emotional impact the band is capable of, and it revealed that the artists behind the music - lead singer Tim Warren, lead guitarist Eric Donnelly, drummer Kurt Leon, bassist Ian Tait, and vocalist Taryn Chory - truly are as genuine in their expression as their songs suggest.

The performance elicited a wide range of emotions from start to end. Their most recent single, Stronger, released in August of this year, has an uplifting feel to it that builds as the song progresses, ushered along by the lyrics: “Low as I may fall, weak as I may be, you remind me I am stronger than I know.”

It was engineered by the band’s drummer, Kurt Leon, which gave them the time and flexibility to make it exactly what they wanted it to be. According to guitarist Eric Donnelly, “We tore it apart a few times and put it back together. It was a very satisfying process.”

Their other single from this summer, Safe Haven, has a similarly optimistic sound. It confronts the anxieties of failure and new parenthood and the feeling of being overwhelmed, but it offers a calm amidst the storm, saying, “With all these fears that you’re facing, when it feels like you’re not going to make it, I’ll be your safe haven.”

Safe Haven also includes the self-aware line, “such a fine line between being inspired and naive.” The song addresses the trap of coming across as overly sentimental when making music with a positive message, and then proudly and defiantly extends a positive message anyways.

At one point in the concert, they switched to an acoustic set with just Warren and Donnelly onstage. They played a few of their older songs, such as Ordinary from their first album Good and Reckless and True (2007) and Desdemona from A Sucker’s Dream (2010). Both songs have a distinctly nostalgic feel that goes deeper than just their age, and the stripped-down performance brought out the full potency of the emotion.

Despite the passion the band put into each song, the most memorable, powerful, and goosebump-inducing part of the show was without question their performance of Somewhere In America. Donnelly prefaced this song by explaining to the crowd that it is true and autobiographical. The weight of that statement became clear with the opening lyrics: “The last thing that my father saw when he was still alive was a gun in the hand of a sick young man with bright blue eyes.”

The song tells the story of the brutal murder of Donnelly’s parents, but its focus reaches beyond his personal experience. It speaks about how his experience is becoming less and less personal as gun violence becomes more and more frequent, the chorus reminding us that “nothing ever changes, just the names and the faces. Somewhere in America, a phone is about to ring.”

The most haunting part of the song, besides the shock of the opening verse, comes after the bridge. As the musical intensity recedes for a moment, the lyrics take the opportunity to hit hard: “The years have been kind, Ma; I’ve got a son now of my own. When I think of what I’ll tell him happened to you, I still don’t know.”

The show continued on for a few more songs after Somewhere In America, with Donnelly breaking out an electric guitar and the upbeat mood from before seeping back into the crowd. But the brief, intense moment of pain gave the following joy all the more power. It proved that the band’s optimism isn’t blind, that their hope didn’t come for free. They are intimately acquainted with the darkness in the world, but they defy it, fiercely and adamantly, by providing their music as a safe haven to all who need it.

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