As I sit here at the doorway to my second time through the TOPXMM project, I find myself with a slight case of writer’s block.

I mean, what can you say when a band you started listening to at the insistence of your future brother in law (who probably saw them at an Ohio State Campus Crusade function) blows up to festival headliner status and then takes your favorite band of all time on tour with them? One can only fanboy so much, right?

As I listen to the reimagined “Heathens,” one line jumps out at me. “They say they can smell your intentions.”

So yeah, I am hoping the guys in Mutemath and Twenty One Pilots read this. I have to be transparent. Yet, at the same time, these two bands have such a deep seeded history with the Tuned Up story (and my own personal music journey) that I can’t NOT write about this.

Like Tyler Joseph in several Twenty One Pilots songs, I have spent much of the past year aware of my own depravity and I have a desire to overcome my own “Blurryface.” What the Mutemath guys have accomplished so well in fleshing out these songs is showing beauty within darkness. While the most popular Twenty One Pilots songs tend to sugarcoat honest lyrics with an upbeat pop melody, the guys take the audience into the abyss. Perhaps the guys didn’t know what would await them at the other end of the fog, but their long time admiration of the Mutemath dudes enabled them to have faith in an excellent final project.

It’s worth saying that I’ve having trouble typing this article because this music begs my full attention. Not in the sense that it requires effort to listen and I can’t multitask. Listening to this is effortless. But the act of listening results in an almost involuntary mental shutting out of everything else. It makes me wonder how those with synaesthesia operate. I do get jealous of the ability to see color alongside certain sounds but I’m not sure I could take the sensory overload that would surely result from this project.

So, what are my personal favorite moments from this EP that I can geek out about? Here’s what comes to mind. First, it’s great to hear some upright bass from Roy Mitchell-Cardenas once again, although this isn’t in the jazz sense we hear in “Obsolete” but in more of a brooding ambient sense perfect for “Heathens.” This paled in comparison to the sense of release and relaxation I felt in the thrilling “Lane Boy,” though. Lots of noise amongst TOP fans was made about the sick “drop” in the climax of the song, and the group of six guys turned that amp up to 11 in a move that just screams “supergroup.” The reworking of “Tear In My Heart” would fit perfectly on Mutemath’s Vitals album and even recalls the title track of Armistice in a few points. You have to love those harmonies too.

After I met my friend Jeremiah Claudio of Tiger Drive (then called Oceanspeak), he once told me a story of running into Tyler Joseph at a Mutemath concert at the Newport Music Hall – I believe it was the Odd Soul tour. I would say that was my favorite show ever, but I digress. I don’t remember much about the conversation Jeremiah says they had, but how cool that a band Tyler and Josh looked up to growing up and as musicians was able to collaborate with them so intimately! An obvious statement. Yet, like my urge to respond to this project, it is one that must be said.