Track Review: Triathalon -‘Day One’

Triathalon, a five-member band based out of New York, is producing the dreamy feel-good music that we need (and the experience of listening to their music is only heightened when you’re stoned).

Their last full-length album, Online, hits all the right spots. Its wavelike production is energetic yet smooth, soul touching, and otherworldly if you decide to listen to it when you’re disengaged or spaced out. **I would add the “stoned” sentence from the last paragraph here, it would flow a lot better**

The band’s first single, “Day One” is a standout from the rest of the tracks. It’s weirdly arousing but in a dark, ghostly way that isn’t offsetting. If anything, it’s inviting. Lead vocalist Adam Intrator’s low and whispery voice makes me feel like I’m spinning in a low-lit room and every time I blink, the lights change color. I throw around the word ‘sexy’ a lot when describing music, but this song is the exception where I mean it. It sounds like a guilty pleasure or maybe a dirty little secret, if we’re getting suggestive with it.

As listeners in the comments of the video have put it, “Fucking spicy mmm” and “this is so god damned SEXY.”

Focusing on the instrumentals and production alone is a trip. The song sounds squiggly with its use of instrumental loops. Visually put, it sounds like how Slinkys look going down the stairs.

The sounds are hollow, but the bass riffs are deep enough to fill it. **not sure if I would keep this as a sentence by itself. Try to add to another paragraph, or maybe write more in relation to the hollowness as related to the other instruments**

Intrator’s use of lower register in the first minute is the highlight of the entire song. But, the contrast of his falsetto with the bass notes of the song is commendable.

Unlike the production or Intrator’s voice, the lyrics of the song aren’t so seductive: “Demons in my eyes like I’m feeling ugly / Hoping that I’m high so they make assumptions / My fingers to the sky, so they see em coming.” Maybe they might be seductive to you, no judgement though.

This is the type of song where pausing midtrack to take everything in—vocals, lyrics, and melody, is needed. I’ve had “Day One” on repeat all night and each listen proves a different experience every time.   

The closing of the song is purely instrumentals, which works out since the song already put me in a daze. I feel higher and have possibly found the meaning to life.

I recommend listening to this song, or even the whole album in the darkness of your room after a bad day. It’ll run through you. Or decide to listen to it while you’re about your day. You may just start bawling your eyes out, though.