TWIAB announce 'Whenever, If Ever' 10th anniversary tour with For Your Health & more

The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die will celebrate the ten year anniversary of their first full length (and last release with co-founder and original lead singer Tom Diaz) Whenever, If Ever on tour in 2023. “This is the tour where we bring out the deep cuts that wouldn’t normally fit in a typical set list for us,” they write. They’ll be joined by Worlds Greatest Dad for the shows, which run through North America in April and May, with additional support from Dreamwell on the first leg and For Your Health on the second. See all dates below.

The NYC show is on May 19 at Le Poisson Rouge, with Worlds Greatest Dad and For Your Health. Tickets to all dates go on sale Wednesday, December 14 at noon.

Here’s what we wrote about Whenever, If Ever in our list of the 100 Best Punk & Emo Albums of the 2010s, where we ranked it at 47:

It’s hard to say who the best band to come out of the emo revival is, but The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die are definitely the most unique. There isn’t really any other band around like this one in any genre, let alone emo. They’re just as much an indie rock or a post-rock band, and they’re likely to dabble in anything from folk to metal to hardcore to chamber pop to spoken word to “covering” John Cage. Their revolving-door lineup changes all the time, and the one on their 2013 debut album Whenever, If Ever looks almost nothing like the one they have today, yet somehow they always manage to maintain a strong identity. TWIABP were already an established band in the emo scene before making this album, thanks to some well-received EPs and splits, and though it’s technically their first full-length, it feels weird to refer to it as a “debut” of something. It’s perhaps more accurately described as the last release with co-founder and original lead singer Tom Diaz (who sadly and unexpectedly passed away in 2018, six years after leaving the band). Tom’s voice was a big appeal of early TWIABP, though they managed to further perfect their sound and grow in popularity with new lead singer David Bello (who joined in 2012 and helped finish Whenever, If Ever), which is tough for a lot of bands to pull off but TWIABP did it. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Before any of that happened, they released Whenever, If Ever, a clear progression from their early EPs but still more flawed than the two albums that would follow. It has some parts that feel like unfinished ideas, and some songs I skip when I return to the album, but the highs far outweigh the lows and they make this album one of the most crucial documents of the emo revival. It’s home to “Picture of a Tree That Doesn’t Look Okay,” one of the band’s earliest (and still best) examples of their ability to fit like seven subgenres of rock music into one song and still come out with something people want to sing along to. It’s home to the singer/songwriter-y “Gig Life,” which is not only one of the most beautiful songs in the band’s discography (and gets extra points for making references to Rival Schools and mewithoutYou in the second chorus). But the album’s best moment is its very last song, the seven-minute “Getting Sodas.” It’s the first of several lengthy, late-album songs where TWIABP would explore their post-rocky side and combine it with some of their most uplifting vocal melodies/lyrics (“I Can Be Afraid of Anything,” “Mount Hum,” “Marine Tigers,” and “Infinite Steve” all followed suit). That tactic became one of TWIABP’s signature moves, and one of the many things that made them stand out from their peers. They took that kind of song to new heights over the years, but even with everything they’ve accomplished since 2013, “Getting Sodas” remains one of the band’s most breathtaking songs every time you hear it.

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