Fourteen years is long enough for nostalgia to calcify into mythology, yet Parts & Labor refuse the easy satisfaction of a reunion built on memory alone. ‘Set of All Sets’ arrives with the urgency of a band convinced that the years apart were not an interruption but an incubation. Rather than recreating the explosive chemistry that once defined them, co-founders Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw expand it, enlisting Christopher Weingarten and Joe Wong in a dual-drum assault that transforms the group’s familiar blend of noise, melody and ecstatic excess into something considerably more ambitious. The result is not simply a comeback record but an enormous statement of artistic persistence, one that wrestles with infinity, collapse, mathematics, politics and hope without surrendering its instinct for unforgettable hooks.
The album’s remarkable achievement lies in how it frames impossible ideas through physical sound. Friel’s overdriven electronics continue to sputter, glow and erupt with unmistakable personality, while Warshaw’s guitar and vocal work remain rooted in punk’s emotional directness. Yet the expanded rhythmic architecture changes everything. Weingarten and Wong do far more than double the volume; they generate constantly shifting momentum, one drummer pushing while the other destabilizes, creating patterns that seem to argue with themselves before arriving at unexpected resolutions. The percussion often functions like another melodic instrument, turning repetition into something fluid rather than mechanical.
That philosophy announces itself immediately through “Endless Cycle Pt. 1: Repetition Nil,” an opening that introduces the album’s fascination with recursive systems. Instead of treating repetition as stasis, the performance reveals how tiny deviations accumulate into dramatic transformation. Every returning phrase carries fresh weight, making the music resemble an evolving equation whose variables refuse to remain fixed. Its companion, “Endless Cycle Pt. 2: Edges of Forgetting,” narrows the emotional lens, balancing triumphant vocal harmonies against arrangements that threaten to dissolve into electronic overload. The friction between optimism and entropy becomes one of the album’s defining emotional languages.
“Many Worlds” stands among the record’s finest achievements because it translates abstract scientific speculation into profoundly human uncertainty. The lyrics contemplate branching possibilities without becoming trapped in intellectual exhibitionism. Instead, every philosophical detour serves an emotional purpose, suggesting that indecision itself can become an existential landscape. Friel and Warshaw sing with conviction rather than detachment, making theoretical physics sound surprisingly intimate.
The recurring appearances of “Descending” function as ingenious structural devices rather than transitional interludes. Their endlessly falling harmonic illusion creates the unsettling sensation of perpetual movement without arrival, reinforcing the album’s recurring meditation on societies convinced they are advancing while remaining trapped inside destructive cycles. Each recurrence subtly alters the listener’s perception of the surrounding songs, transforming the album into a carefully engineered psychological experience rather than a conventional sequence of tracks. The explosive “Haunted Limbs” demonstrates Parts & Labor’s enduring gift for marrying exuberance with unease. Its enormous melodic sweep refuses to soften the unsettling questions embedded within the lyrics. The imagined construction of impossible spaces becomes both metaphor and mission statement, reflecting a band determined to pursue artistic ideals despite economic realities, geographical separation and personal hardship. That emotional contradiction gives the song remarkable durability.
If “Seamripper” tears apart established forms, “Arterial Material” pumps fresh life through the album’s central ideas. The former thrives on exhilarating instability, with the four musicians sounding simultaneously synchronized and gloriously out of control, while the latter channels relentless rhythmic propulsion into an affirmation of physical existence itself. Every distorted keyboard surge collides with thunderous percussion, yet nothing descends into chaos for its own sake. Precision remains hidden beneath apparent overload. “Anti-Lions and Lemonade” offers one of the album’s most surprising emotional pivots. Built around hypnotic rhythmic interplay, it exchanges brute force for patient accumulation, allowing the dual drummers to demonstrate remarkable restraint. The composition suggests that optimism need not arrive through grand declarations; sometimes it emerges through persistence, through musicians listening as intensely as they perform.
By the time “Endless Cycle Pt. 3: Better Run” appears, the suite has evolved into something resembling a manifesto. Its explosive momentum carries unmistakable urgency, yet the exhilaration never masks the darker implications beneath the surface. “Endless Cycle Pt. 4: Working in Storm” completes the sequence magnificently, bringing together melodic grandeur and rhythmic complexity in a finale that justifies the sprawling architecture established from the opening minutes. What initially appeared fragmented reveals itself as carefully considered long-form composition. Perhaps no track captures the album’s intellectual ambitions more effectively than “Indecision Tree.” Climate catastrophe, philosophical paralysis and overwhelming possibility converge without sacrificing musical immediacy. Parts & Labor avoid the trap of treating ideas as decorative references; every conceptual thread becomes inseparable from the emotional force of the performance. The song grows increasingly expansive until its closing moments resemble collective catharsis achieved through sheer sonic determination.
The final stretch provides an especially satisfying sequence. “Parallel Tracks” condenses the album’s fascination with alternate realities into one of its most direct and infectious pieces, while “Off by One” examines violence’s recursive logic through propulsive arrangements that refuse comfortable resolution. “Like They’re Here to Stay” carries an undercurrent of hard-earned resilience, acknowledging permanence without romanticizing it. The title composition, “Set of All Sets,” provides an ending worthy of the journey preceding it. Rather than resolving every thematic question, it embraces contradiction as a permanent condition of existence. The climactic refrain balances exhilaration with melancholy, suggesting that hope remains meaningful precisely because certainty remains unattainable. Few contemporary records conclude with such intellectual openness while delivering such overwhelming emotional release.
What makes ‘Set of All Sets’ exceptional is not simply its scale but its confidence in treating complexity as something exhilarating rather than intimidating. Mathematics, quantum theory, programming logic and ecological anxiety become emotional vocabulary instead of academic ornamentation. The album celebrates impossible ambitions while fully acknowledging the conditions that make them impossible. That balance gives the music uncommon depth. Friel, Warshaw, Weingarten and Wong sound less interested in preserving the identity of Parts & Labor than expanding its possibilities beyond previous limitations. Their chemistry reflects experience accumulated separately over more than a decade before being redirected into a shared vision that feels astonishingly contemporary without abandoning the fearless idealism that first made the band compelling. Many reunion albums seek validation from the past. ‘Set of All Sets’ seeks conversation with the future, constructing a monumental work whose contradictions, ambitions and emotional generosity continue resonating long after its final feedback dissipates.
Learn more links:
Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Bandcamp
