Vessel by Twenty One Pilots

I love this album :)

So. Twenty One Pilots. I’ve written about them before, with my posts "Next Semester by Twenty One Pilots" and my two-part series "Songs that might reflect a deeper sort of love." Here, I’m going to write about their 2013 album Vessel, my favorite. Now ultimately, the best thing I can convince you of is to listen to it for yourself. But if you’re not used to alt or rock or even pop (and I think some of my readers fall within that category), it might sound like a lot of noise and darkness and confusion. So this post is part defense, part tribute, and part guide to why I love it.

The main elements of Twenty One Pilot’s music are Josh Dun’s drums, Tyler Joseph’s somewhat gravelly tenor rap and vocals, occasional ukulele, and a strong keyboard presence - whether synths or piano. This album in particular is hard to describe because there are few natural sensations I can compare it to - it's a self-contained, electronic world of abstract poetry flowing out from a deep inner well of emotion. My best comparison is that it’s like being bathed in tears and neon colors and shadows (and that could be applied to many of their other songs as well).

The reason why it’s so contained and abstract is because it’s deeply concerned with the self and the mind. The singer¹ is fraught with trying to resolve the mysterious chasm within himself - wringing his hands over his anxiety, his selfishness, his hypocrisy. At the same time he is desperately trying to seek God and only getting the vaguest glimpses, like staring up at a dark cloud with the white sun flaring out only at the edges. This is very much a fall and winter album, I think - when nature dies and a troubled mind becomes more active.

I only just realized as I sat down to write this that this album inhabits the same part of my brain as Madeleine L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle In Time. Glancing back at the book, this makes more sense than I thought. In my imagination, Camazotz (the planet Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace visit to find Mr. Murry) is a cold, mechanical world, similar to the electronic sound of Vessel. And in Wrinkle In Time, as in Vessel, a principal problem is the brain all by itself, disconnected from love, controlling everything by its tyrannous rhythm.

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She knew that her own puny little brain was no match for this great, bodiless, pulsing, writhing mass on the round dais. She shuddered as she looked at IT. In the lab at school there was a human brain preserved in formaldehyde, and the seniors preparing for college had to take it out and look at it and study it. Meg had felt that when the day came she would never be able to endure it. But now she thought that if only she had a dissecting knife she would slash at IT, cutting ruthlessly through cerebrum, cerebellum. 
          -A Wrinkle In Time, p. 195

I begin to assemble what weapons I can find
'Cause sometimes to stay alive, you gotta kill your mind
          -"Migraine"

And the line “I kinda like it when I make you cry” from “Semi-Automatic” seems like a sentiment the possessed Charles Wallace would share.

So the comparison does make sense. Both the singer in Vessel and the world of Camazotz are under the strict rule of a mind other than God’s, and for that reason, they are tyrannized.

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I’m not going to discuss every track on this album - but here are my favorite ones.

• Ode to Sleep (track 1). This song switches from dark and aggressive, to upbeat, to pleading and sparkling, somehow bittersweet. The transitions are smooth, despite these sharp contrasts. According to Genius, Tyler Joseph has said of this song, “The reason why this is the first song on the album is that I feel like it kind of prepares the listener for the rest of the album, it almost puts them through a boot camp of what to expect… Which is don’t expect anything!” And sonically “Ode to Sleep” certainly does do that, taking all the dark and bright moods of the album and separating them out. (By “dark and bright” I don’t mean “sad and happy.” Almost every song on this record is sad at heart, but some are still upbeat on the outside). Lyrically - well, there’s a lot crammed into the lyrics, as you can see on Genius, but some of the most interesting bits are the biblical references. In verse one Tyler asks, “I’m pleading “Please, oh please!” on my knees repeatedly asking/Why it’s got to be like this, is this living free?” and the phrase “living free” has always reminded me of Bible verses about freedom, such as “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36) and “For you were called to freedom, brothers” (Galatians 5:13). The most obvious reference is that of Peter’s denial of Jesus in verse 2 (which again mentions freedom): “I’m not free, I asked forgiveness three times/Same amount that I denied, I three-time MVP’d this crime/I’m afraid to tell you who I adore/won’t tell you who I’m singing towards.” I’ll let you ponder that for yourself. So there you go. I wouldn’t often listen to this song by itself, but it really does set the tone for the album.

• Holding Onto You (track 2). I think I’ll talk about this one last.

• Migraine (track 3). (I’m going to try to be more brief than my Ode to Sleep description from now on). This is another of the most notable songs on the album, where the singer gives the most explicit explanation of what’s going on his head. It’s actually quite catchy, for also being …..heartbreaking. “Am I the only one I know, oh/Waging my wars behind my face and above my throat?”

• House of Gold (track 4). I have had mixed feelings about this song for a long time. It is the only happy song on Vessel, a …ukulele anthem… about…. Tyler’s mother? It’s singable, youthful, loving, lighthearted (not that Tyler himself sounds happy, but the instrumentals do), and offputtingly quirky. “She asked me son, when I grow old/Will you buy me a house of gold?/And when your father turns to stone/Will you take care of me?/I will make you queen of everything you see/I’ll put you on the map, I’ll cure you of disease.” I suppose Tyler’s care for his mother is a refreshing break from his toil of inner anguish, while also setting a very good example for all sons! Some more great life philosophy is found in the second verse: “And since we know that dreams are dead/And life turns plans upon their head/I will plan to be a bum/So I just might become someone.”

• Fake You Out (track 9). When I say this album sounds electronic, cold, and cerebral, this is the song I mean. And yet it feels electronic and cerebral in the most desperate way, shimmering with beauty despite the isolation of the sound and the lyrics, similar to a galaxy or a star - which of course I think of, since the latter is referenced in the pre-chorus: “You say that you are close, is close the closest star?/You just feel twice as far, you just feel twice as far.”

• Trees (track 10). The singer has been struggling with God throughout the whole album, undeniably, with noisy poetry and pained metaphors, but here the plea becomes most simple. Still intense, but a bit more tired. Maybe more “prayerful,” the way we usually think of that. “I know where You stand/Silent in the trees/And that’s where I am/Why won’t You speak/Where I happen to be?”

• Holding Onto You. So this is my favorite on Vessel - my favorite song ever, in fact, if I had to choose one. And I have to put it last, because often, for me in life, this is where I come down to. Hearing the opening chords is like coming down to earth after an unwieldy flight, and the impact hurts a little bit, but there’s relief, ultimately. This song is expansive, multi-textured, four minutes long with two bridges, though it still goes way too fast. I could say more about the lyrics - how they beautifully tie together the struggle with one’s mind, the beauty of faith, and the importance for humans of making art (one of TØP’s less obvious themes, and one of my favorite things to think about, ever) - but in poetry-nerd fashion I want to point out the assonance (repeated vowel sounds) in the chorus, because due to this song assonance is my favorite poetic device;

  You are surrounding, all of my surroundings,
  Sounding down the mountain range of my left-side brain
  You are surrounding, all of my surroundings, 
  Twisting the kaleidescope behind both of my eyes.

  So yeah, that’s definitely poetry.

So there’s a bare summary of what I like about this album, hopefully enough to make you listen to it and appreciate it. I like Vessel² because, similarly to Madeleine L’Engle’s books, it shows size as relative, the self as a battleground, humans as responsible, and God as bigger than we can imagine, with the most important conflict of all being that between His love and our darkness. Or that’s how I interpret it, anyway.

1. When I talk about an album and say “the singer,” I’m not trying to make a statement about the actual singer (Tyler Joseph, in this case), but rather trying to talk about the character who’s expressing themselves in the song, as portrayed by the music. Oftentimes they may be the same person, of course, if the song is complete self-expression, but I don’t want to make assumptions.

2. In case you’re curious, here’s a quote from the Genius page for the lyrics of Truce (the final track of the album) explaining why it’s called “Vessel”: “I think of taking that inevitable fact that we’re going to die and realizing I have a body, I have a life, I have a voice, its kind of a vessel that really kind of holds something. A vessel I think of maybe a ship or a container. And the vessel’s not that important, my body’s not that important, my voice isn’t that important, the songs aren’t that important, my life isn’t really that important, but the important thing is what’s inside that vessel. Right now I have.. I have a message.. I have something to say, what I’m saying is the important thing inside of that vessel and I thought it would be cool to name an album vessel because even inside that packaging, behind that cover… there’s a message. And thanks for listening to that message and I hope that it in some way inspires you and encourages because if it does then everything will have been worth it for me.”