LOS ANGELES, CA- I have always been a huge Maynard James Keenan fan, though perhaps not in the order most people would expect. For many devotees, Tool sits unquestionably at the top of the hierarchy. For me, it has always been A Perfect Circle first, Puscifer second and Tool third. That is less a judgment on the quality of any one project than an appreciation for how remarkably well Keenan has managed to keep the three identities separate. Different collaborators bring different musical vocabularies out of him, and somehow each band occupies its own distinct emotional and sonic space.
I sit particularly comfortably in the A Perfect Circle camp. “3 Libras” remains my favorite song Keenan has recorded across the entire catalogs of A Perfect Circle, Puscifer and Tool. There is something about the combination of Billy Howerdel’s atmospheric compositions and Keenan’s voice that reaches me differently. A Perfect Circle can be enormous without sacrificing intimacy, beautiful without becoming delicate, and brutally heavy without necessarily relying upon brute force.
That is part of what makes “To Whom It May Concern” feel so exciting.
It has been eight years since A Perfect Circle released their last full-length album, 2018’s Eat the Elephant. The band has hardly disappeared during that time, playing sporadically over the intervening years, but hearing Howerdel and Keenan creating new music together again feels different. Following “Starless,” which has now reached No. 1 at Active Rock radio, “To Whom It May Concern” suggests that this latest chapter is not simply about revisiting what A Perfect Circle once was. They are expanding its vocabulary.
And both songs seem to have their fingers pressed firmly against a particularly raw nerve.
“To Whom It May Concern” is steeped in frustration and despair, but also recognition. Keenan wakes physically and spiritually exhausted, describing the hurt as something he feels in his heart, gut and soul. From there, the song becomes a letter, and increasingly it feels as though its recipient is all of us.
The target is not simply political division. It is the machinery that keeps that division alive.
Keenan looks back toward a time when people could “agree to disagree,” before describing a world in which urgency is manipulated, empathy is eroded and algorithms continually reinforce despair. The result is a population conditioned to see devils everywhere. Neighbors become enemies. Disagreement becomes existential. People who once might have sat across from each other and talked instead become weapons pointed at one another.
But beneath all of that anger is something surprisingly human. The song repeatedly reminds us that the people on the other side of these manufactured divisions remain our neighbors, siblings, elders and mothers. The enemy we have been trained to recognize may actually be our own next of kin.
That, to me, is where “To Whom It May Concern” becomes more than another meditation on how miserable the modern world can feel. It sounds like an attempt to shake us awake.
The sleep paralysis Keenan invokes becomes an especially potent metaphor. We can see what is happening. We can feel the dread of it. We recognize the mechanisms manipulating our attention and feeding our anger, yet somehow we remain immobilized beneath them. Damn the algorithm.
So perhaps the letter is addressed to anyone still willing to listen.
Wake up. Stop feeding the algorithm. Recover your empathy. Talk to each other again. Break free from the psychological and social machinery that profits from keeping us frightened, furious and divided.
“To Whom It May Concern” does not pretend that doing any of that will be easy. A Perfect Circle have rarely trafficked in easy answers. But after eight years without a new full-length record, hearing Howerdel and Keenan once again use this band to explore that uncomfortable space between despair and awareness makes the prospect of whatever comes next tremendously exciting.
I have waited a long time to hear A Perfect Circle moving forward again.
After “Starless” and now “To Whom It May Concern,” I cannot wait to hear where they take us next.
Follow A Perfect Circle on Facebook, TikTok, X, and Instagram.
*********************
