Each day of December this year, I’m highlighting one of my favourite albums of 2024. Counting down the list, we start with #31 on December 1st and go all the way down until we’ve reached #1 on December 31st. Today, #16 on my Album of the Year list: Twenty One Pilots – ‘Clancy’.

Twenty One Pilots released an album this year. ‘Clancy’ is the duo’s seventh full-length piece and serves as the final chapter in tøp’s convoluted conceptual series. Important to know: this album is the continuation of 2018-album ‘Trench’. ‘Scaled and Icy’ (2021) also played a part in it, purposefully not being as great an album as you would expect from this band (more on that later), and earlier releases ‘Blurryface’ (2015) and ‘Vessel’ (2013) made for the first chapters in this intense lore. The Twenty One Pilots saga is way too intricate to discuss here on the blog (click here if you want to know more) but join me today as we’ll try and unfold the myth surrounding ‘Clancy’.

I’m a fan of Twenty One Pilots. I’ve always been. I never really understood the dislike for this band. The only time I’ve stopped following the duo a bit was in the years that followed after their album ‘Trench’, which in itself was a very solid album. However, when ‘Clancy’ got announced as ‘the continuation to ‘Trench’, my interest was peaked once again. One thing to know about Twenty One Pilots is that their songwriting has always been phenomenally creative and original. Their self-titled debut (2009) has been my favourite album of all time for many years now due to its unique and heavy-loaded emo-style songwriting. It’s no surprise a band like this is able to come up with lore so intricate, even the most renowned fans struggle to understand it at times. At least, with the release of ‘Clancy’, all loose ends should get tied together. Let’s dive right into it. The first lyrics (after the German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese intro) on opener ‘Overcompensate’ play an important part in understanding what’s going on. “Welcome back to Trench. I created this world, to feel some control. Destroy it if I want.” We’re back in a world called Trench. In Trench, there’s a dystopian city called Dema. And Dema is where we find protagonist Clancy. So, what happened: basically, after ‘Trench’ (the album), Clancy was taken hostage and forced out of Dema. Afterwards, Clancy had to make ‘propaganda’ for a society ran by Nico and the Niners which turned out to be ‘Scaled and Icy’, tøp’s 2021 album. On ‘Clancy’, our protagonist escapes from captivity to free its fellow citizens of Dema and defeat Nico and the Niners. That’s in short what this is all about. Incorporate some stuff from the older albums into this story and, ta-da: you have created yourself a complex storyline. Bear in mind: this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Anyway, before I get too deep into this rabbit hole, let’s dive into the music aspect of the album. ‘Clancy’’s Wikipedia features a brilliant section on its songs, specifically what they refer to and how they relate to one another which turned out to be very useful for me in understanding this album a bit better. I have split my listening experiences up in two separate sections: one with the music videos and one without the music videos. We’ll start off with the latter. From a point-blank range, after listening to it only a handful of times, I can’t say I’m all too fuzzed about most songs. They just don’t do much for me. Even though ‘Clancy’ is supposed to be Twenty One Pilots’ most complete album yet, touching upon pretty much every genre within the band has ever made music, there’s just not many stand-outs for me. Which is a shame. ‘Next Semester’ seems like a sloppy take on pop punk, ‘The Craving (Jenna’s version)’ is the mandatory ballad, and until my personal favourite and album ender ‘Paladin Strait’, not a single song manages to grasp my attention.

So far for my ‘music only’ review. Now, let’s incorporate those music videos into the story. Why? Because Twenty One Pilots has released a music video for each and every song on ‘Clancy’. Some being part of the ‘main’ storyline, some being just jolly standouts without much thought behind it. If we continue the Clancy storyline, all we need in terms of the videos is ‘Overcompensate’, ‘Navigating’, and ‘Paladin Strait’. Those three videos belong to each other and tell the story of Clancy’s return to Dema where the Bandito’s (reference) fight while Clancy takes on Nico and the Niners (reference). Including a cliffhanger at the end of the beautiful ‘Paladin Strait’. Now, for the others. Prior to the album’s release, singer Tyler Joseph revealed that some of the videos have been directed by drummer Josh Dun, who hasn’t quite got any directing experience whatsoever. Therefore, videos for songs like ‘Backslide’, ‘Lavish’, and ‘Oldies Station’ surely aren’t the most well-produces ones. You can clearly tell the budget went straight into the ‘storyline’ videos. However, after some tossing and turning, I figured there’s something to it. These videos gives off some sort of ‘amateurish’ vibe which you don’t get to see many bands of this stature do anymore.

Let’s quickly summarise what we have had to deal with up until now. We’ve got ourselves a decent album with a super intricate lore, dating back to albums from a decade ago. The music itself makes for a bit of a forgettable mix of genres: zoning out is not a rarity. On the flip side, there’s 13 music videos who, in their own right, all add something to the album. It makes seemingly forgettable songs such as ’Snap Back’ and ‘At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb’ stand out in a good way. As a long time fan of this band, it’s fun to hear and see some references to older songs from previous albums; the video for ‘Backslide’ features similar shots as in ‘Stressed Out’ (2015),’ while Next Semester’ nods to ‘Car Radio’ (2013). The fact that most of these – at first glance – somewhat bland songs are linked to a fun or gripping music video really adds to the experience. If you don’t know anything about tøp’s lore, ‘Clancy’ is just a concept album of which you can’t figure out the concept. But if you take the music videos and background information into account, it’s actually a great album. The ‘Clancy’ package is solid, as long as you take into account all the additional components that you will have to deal with. ‘Clancy’ might just be one truly for the Twenty One Pilots fans. I guess in this case, I can count myself lucky that I’m one of them.