Turnstile took just over a year to release a versions album of Never Enough, following a path others have carved before them—Paul McCartney with McCartney III, Dua Lipa with Club Future Nostalgia, Charli XCX with Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. The Baltimore band chooses a route of complete reimagining, with many of the revisited tracks rebuilt from scratch and supported only by the original vocals, and in many cases not even that.
Never Enough propelled the Baltimore group to levels entirely unusual for a hardcore outfit. It was a commercial and critical success unlike anything in their career, debuting at number 9 on the Billboard 200 and becoming the reason they can now boast two Grammys: Best Rock Album and Best Metal Performance for the track Birds. In JENESAISPOP’s yearbook, it was named the 21st best album of 2025.
Led by Brendan Yates, the band wholeheartedly trusts the repertoire of their latest record, and for most of Never Enough: Versions the versatility of the songs is evident beyond doubt, carried to places we would never have imagined thanks to a curated set of collaborators, from Elton John to Panda Bear to A.G. Cook. The best part of the album is that almost nothing sounds like Turnstile: there’s jazz, electronic pop, folk, indie pop, dream pop, club, techno, and death metal, among others.
With 22 new versions of the 14 original songs, it’s easy to spot which tracks are less essential. Angel Du$t is one of the few invited groups that honors the band’s origins, but their “SUNSHOWER” ends up being a touch too faithful to the original. The same argument can be made for Elton John’s “SEEIN’ STARS,” clearly the most striking name on the tracklist. Elton’s piano takes on a special role as a pop device, but his performance isn’t particularly favorable since it’s alternated with Yates’s original take. The rest of the track is entirely nailed. Dying Fetus, however, have made the heaviest track of the project even heavier, turning “BIRDS” into something ripped from hell—in the best sense.
“MAGIC MAN” proved the hardest to rework. Panda Bear and Alex G both give it a try, each on their own, and neither hits the mark. The author of “Sinister Grift” moves it fully into their own territory, even adding new lines (“When I lose control, sit beside me”) and sounding exactly like you’d imagine their own work would sound, but it gives the sense of one of those cases where the artist overthinks it. Perhaps vocal samples from the original weren’t necessary. Alex G also sticks to the synthesizers, but follows the remix route on a track that keeps evolving without landing on a concrete idea. The rest of the LP is filled with solid decisions.
It opens with a beautiful and surprising acoustic rendition of the title track, performed by the New York group Porches. It’s a masterclass in leveraging listener anticipation. They know the song, so they highlight certain moments as if it might suddenly burst, just like in the original, but it never abandons its folk universe.
It isn’t the only version that leans into contrast: Blood Orange transforms “LIGHT DESIGN” into a delicate dream-pop arrangement with flutes; Faye Webster opts for an intimate whispered bossa nova take on “I CARE,” the most poppy song from the original, now adorned with piano and guitar arrangements; Hayley Williams adds a psychedelic glaze to the brief “CEILING,” which now stretches to three minutes; Mustafa and Julien Baker, the most improbable duo on the LP, trade lines in “TIME IS HAPPENING,” reimagined as a ballad, while Chanel Beads brings one of the mother songs into art pop. But it’s A.G. Cook who delivers the best reimagining of “DULL.”
Cook, a collaborator of Charli XCX, twists it into something you could describe as electronic hardcore. It’s one of the most potent displays of creativity on “VERSIONS,” and likely the LP’s standout electronic remix. There were already hints of this genre on the 2025 release, and Baltimore’s crew wanted to dedicate a substantial portion of this album to expanding that universe. Floating Points and Four Tet work wonders with their techno and dance versions of “SOLE” and “LOOK OUT FOR ME,” respectively, while Rod Lee, the DJ nicknamed “the godfather of Baltimore club,” takes “NEVER ENOUGH” to the dancefloor, though it isn’t the remix you’d loop endlessly. Slayyyter’s take, however, is the one you’ll loop: she leaves her voice in a wild reading of “BIRDS,” the closest thing to a pop hit on the entire LP.
It’s clear that much of the project’s success stems from the extraordinary variety of artists involved, drawn from all corners of the industry and from different levels of fame. It goes even further when some of the less renowned names turn out to be among the most surprising. Dan Deacon, whom we recommended on this very site twenty years ago and who has lately been composing soundtracks, uses his vocoder to morph “DREAMING” into a hallucinatory experience.
The same goes for Brandon Woody and Shabaka Hutchings. Hutchings delivers a brilliant reimagining of “SLOWDIVE” in a framework of experimental jazz, with his furious saxophone as the centerpiece but also functioning as a partial remix, using the drums and muted guitars of the original. Woody, meanwhile, draws on the melodic hook of “DREAMING” for a grand trumpet-led jazz version. It feels spiritual. It feels like an achievement just to listen. And is this on a Turnstile album? It certainly is a dream.
