The Emo Roundup

It’s been around a month since the last time I posted here, so let me just go ahead and apologize for that right now. I really want this to be a regular thing, and I’ll try not to slack off like that in the future. Right now, I’m going to try and catch up by talking about a bunch of different things that I’ve been enjoying during my absence. Specifically, I’m going to discuss the more emo-ish end of the spectrum. I’m sure you expected no less.

-1-

I’m most excited about the fact that there’s quite a bit of new Fall Out Boy material floating around right now. As I’ve previously detailed, I discovered their album "Take This To Your Grave" last year and fell in love with it. At around the same time I was spending my Christmas money on that CD, I found that they had a newer acoustic EP, entitled "My Tongue Will Always Be The B-Side To My Heart". I already had a burn of the full-length, but I prefer to own actual copies of albums I like that much, and even though the EP was only 5 songs, it cost almost as much as "Take This To Your Grave." So I didn’t buy the EP, and in fact didn’t even think about it again until about a week ago. That was when I found out about a new seven-song release that had gotten leaked to the internet, called "From Under the Cork Tree." Information about this collection of songs is scant–I’m not sure if it’s a sampler culled from an upcoming full-length, or an actual EP that will be released in a few months. Either way, I downloaded it, and located a copy of the acoustic EP while I was at it. I snagged a few scattered one-song demos during my search that are also floating around cyberspace. The whole thing added up to about 45 minutes of new music, and the CD-R I burned of it is one of my favorite things to listen to right now.

I’m especially excited about the 7 songs on "From Under the Cork Tree." They show Fall Out Boy expanding their horizons, in particular on "Dance Dance," which mixes hardcore-influenced fast parts with a sort of melodrama reminiscent of My Chemical Romance's plundering of classic musical theater. "Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued" is also a new direction for them. It revolves around a bouncy mid-tempo rock riff that stays catchy without relying on typical pop-punk/emo tropes. The latter song and "Champagne For My Real Friends, Real Pain For My Sham Friends" (some of these song titles are pure genius) both have lyrics that discuss Fall Out Boy’s recent surge in popularity. Evidently, these former hardcore kids are not too sure how they feel about all of that. They don’t dwell on it too much, though, preferring to focus on their tried-and-true themes of alienation and romantic loss. "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" is just as quintessential of a breakup song as anything off "Take This To Your Grave", and features another of their many classic choruses: "I don’t blame you for being you, but you can’t blame me for hating it." We’ve all been there... or, at least, I sure have.

The acoustic EP features a new version of "Take This To Your Grave"’s big single, "Grand Theft Autumn", three new songs, and what has to be the millionth cover version of Joy Division’s "Love Will Tear Us Apart." It’s a decent record, but on the whole it’s a bit thin. I’m glad I didn’t shell out the ten bucks Best Buy wanted for it. At this point, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" has moved beyond cult classic into the realm of cliche, and no cover version could possibly shed any new light on this old chestnut. If they were going to do a new wave cover in order to show how down with the 80s they are, a suspect move in and of itself, it would have been nice to see that they'd put a bit of thought into it, instead of jumping for what is probably the most obvious choice possible. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that covering an 80s night staple like "Love Will Tear Us Apart" does more to make it look like Fall Out Boy don't know their shit where the 80s are concerned, which I can't imagine was the intention.

The three new songs are better, but since they only feature guitar and vocals, they really just make me long for full-band versions. It doesn’t help that a full-band electric version of "Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner" is one of the demoes that I found online while searching for this EP. Hopefully the new full-length that is obviously in the works will include full band versions of all of these songs, in particular "It's Not a Side Effect of the Cocaine, I Am Thinking It Must Be Love", my favorite of the three new ones.

-2-

Further Seems Forever recently released their third full-length, "Hide Nothing," which features their third singer in as many albums. While many people remember them best as the band that unleashed Chris Carrabba, aka Dashboard Confessional, onto the world, I actually liked the vocalist on their second album, Jason Gleason, a bit better than Carrabba. Therefore I was at first disappointed to hear that he’d left the band. That is, until I learned that their new singer is Jon Bunch, formerly of Reason To Believe and Sensefield. Sensefield were one of my favorite bands about a decade ago. Sensefield were one of the first bands within the underground hardcore scene to take "emo" beyond a lyrical stance and turn it into a musical sound that predicted what we call emo today. Of course, at the time, this put them in line for a lot of criticism, but those who put aside the prejudices and listened to the albums were rewarded with some of the best melodic, emotional, hardcore-influenced rock ever produced. Things went sour for Sensefield when they got trapped in a bad major label deal after their third album. It took them four years of being unable to release anything before they finally got out of that situation, and something essential had drained from the band by that time. Their fourth album, "Tonight and Forever", seemed flat and sterile, and they broke up soon after its release.

However, now, with Further Seems Forever’s "Hide Nothing," Jon Bunch has redeemed the legacy of Sensefield. More than anything, it was his voice that was the strongest identifying mark of Sensefield’s sound, and the combination of that voice with Further Seems Forever’s melodic rock songs brings back memories of Sensefield as they were before the disastrous major label affair. It's not just the memories that make this album work, either–these songs have more than enough merit to justify listening to them even if you don't care about Sensefield at all. From the powerful midtempo opener "Light Up Ahead" to the slow, quiet "All Rise" and the more upbeat tracks like "Someone You Know" and "Bleed", there’s not a weak moment here. The only real disappointment is that the album, at 28 minutes, is so short.

One interesting factor of Jon Bunch singing for Further Seems Forever is that it ends the mystery of his religious affiliation. Sensefield were never openly Christian, but their lyrics hinted at references to a higher power. Bunch would even use the word "lord" as an interjection upon occasion. When asked direct questions about religious beliefs during interviews, the members of Sensefield, Bunch in particular, would give evasive answers that didn’t really shed any light on the subject. That said, Further Seems Forever have never hidden the fact that they are Christian, and there are a few songs on this album where the subject shows up in the words. I know a lot of people who don’t hold these beliefs get uncomfortable with bands that are open about religious affiliations, fearing that they will be "preached to." Luckily for those people, Jon Bunch and Further Seems Forever are not from the "believe as we do or burn in hell" school of things. In the closing track, "For All We Know", when Bunch sings, "These days are numbered, but things will get better, I hope," it doesn’t feel like they’re pushing anything on anyone. It gives more of a sense that they’re wishing us all the best, that their religious beliefs lead them to want happiness and peace for everyone who might be hearing the song. I would think we could all use a bit of that, regardless of what god we may or may not believe in.

-3-

Compared to Further Seems Forever’s well-wishes for humanity, the lyrical topic on the new Armor For Sleep album is quite a bit darker. The record, entitled "What To Do When You Are Dead," is a concept album–what might have been called a "rock opera" at one time. In the first song, "Car Underwater", the narrator has found himself, as the title suggests, trapped in a car under water. It’s one of the more masochistic methods of suicide I’ve ever heard of, but he confirms that it was intentional in his mention of having left a note for his ex-girlfriend. At the end of the song, he drowns. And for the remaining ten songs on the album, he’s dead. In the next song, "The Truth About Heaven", he’s returned to wander the earth as a ghost, because he can’t stand to be in heaven without the girl he's left behind. Over the course of the album, he follows her around as she continues to live her life. At first he thinks that they will reunite in the afterlife once she dies, but by the end of the record he has come to realize that though she is grief-stricken by his death, in time she will overcome it, move on with her life, and fall in love again–with someone alive. The album ends with no peace, no closure, just bitterness and recriminations.

It’d be easy to see this album and its lyrics as reinforcing many of the things people say about the inability of emo’s teenage male fans to get outside of their own egocentric perspective and understand the women they fall in love with as human beings, rather than objectifying them. However, this analysis falls apart under deeper examination. While this album does deal with these tendencies, it in no way constitutes an endorsement of them.

The act of committing suicide, while a tragedy whenever it happens, is also the ultimate in grandiose melodrama. Teenagers who attempt suicide, whether they are successful or not, are often convinced that this final act is the only way to make the people around them realize how important they are, and that they should have treated them better. Sting summed it up well in the classic Police song "Can’t Stand Losing"–"You’ll be sorry when I’m dead, and all this guilt will be on your head." Suicidal teens, especially those who are dealing with romantic loss, are convinced that their lives will never improve without the appreciation from loved ones, which they don’t feel they are getting. However, it at least makes them happy to think that they could, through some grand, final, life-ending gesture, finally make all of those people realize what they should have been doing all along.

The argument could be made that boys who do this in order to inflict guilt and grief upon girls that dumped them are doing the ultimate in objectifying women. Ignoring the fact that this person doesn’t deserve to feel these horrible things, and further ignoring that in the end it is their choice whether they remain miserable forever or find a way to move beyond their current pain of loss, they treat the women as agents of evil who have wounded them and deserve to pay for it. And of course, in doing so, said boys ignore the fact that these girls are just people too–teenage people, in fact, who are still figuring out how to make their way in the world, just like the boys. The argument that this entire train of thought is essentially sexist has plenty of merit, and if one was to take "What To Do When You Are Dead" as an endorsement of this train of thought, then one could call the album sexist.

But that’s not what’s going on here, at all. "Car Underwater" presents the previously described male train of thought without comment, and if this song were taken by itself, it would seem to endorse that train of thought. However, as the album continues, Armor For Sleep analyzes how it would feel for a boy who thinks that way to be able to see the days that followed his dramatic action. At points during the album, he begs the girl to respond to him, to say something, to touch him... invariably, he receives no response. By the next to last song, he’s attempting to convince her of his own importance in her life. "I’ve got this feeling that I was put here for you," he says, but from the listener’s perspective it’s obvious that it’s himself he’s trying to convince. In the final song, "The End of a Fraud," he’s figured it out: "When I left, you all stayed the same." He's horrified to realize this, and departs for some other form of afterlife full of bitterness. In his unflinching portrayal of this melodramatic emo kid, vocalist Brian Jorgeson demonstrates a lesson that kids like that who sit around contemplating suicide after a breakup often ignore: the lesson that life goes on with or without you. Instead of relying on the typical "people care about you" approach, Jorgeson points out the depressing but true flip side of it all–if you do commit suicide, you can convince yourself that the people who wronged you will realize what they did wrong, and that they will never recover from the loss, but the truth is that, in time, people will get over it and go on without you. With "What To Do When You Are Dead", Armor For Sleep have created an anti-suicide message that may just be more persuasive than any amount of coming out and saying, "Don’t do it."

Of course, if these lyrics were all they had to offer, this album would be interesting as a sociological document, but not as an actual piece of music. However, the music more than stands on its own. Unlike their first album, which I found rather generic, "What To Do When You Are Dead" is immediately impressive. The production is excellent, indicating care and attention to detail; the guitars are clear and powerful, and the drumming is flawless–crisp without a hint of studio trickery. Creative touches such as the strings that build underneath heavy guitars at the climax of "Awkward Last Words" and the drum machines, layered guitars, and phasing on "Basement Ghost Singing", an atmospheric song that provides the album’s most chilling moment, are the sort of thing one seldom sees on typical emo records these days. Even the songs that do fit a more typical pattern, such as "Stay On the Ground" and "Car Underwater", are well-constructed enough to stand above the average. Rather than playing it safe and creating something guaranteed to sell, Armor For Sleep take risks both lyrically and musically, and they all pay off.

-4-

While I was absent from this place, I received a CD in the mail by a band called Goldspot, entitled "Tally of the Yes Men," which has the distinction of being the first promotional CD I've ever received as a result of this blog. It's pretty good, too, which anyone who receives promo materials on a regular basis will tell you is not typical. I'm taking this as a good omen.

Goldspot delight in using unconventional instrumentation, from programmed drums to xylophones, and tend to avoid spending too long working with any one sound. There is a prevailing mood, however, and it's one of melancholy. While they tend to deemphasize the bleak mood of a lot of the songs through elaborate arrangements, the true face shines through on "So Fast". On this song, singer/guitarist Siddhartha, the mastermind behind Goldspot (other than the drummer, he's the only musician who plays on every song), steps out from behind the wall of sound he creates on the rest of the album, accompanying himself with only a quietly strummed acoustic guitar. His vocals here resemble the high, lonesome tenor of Roy Orbison, another singer who used his melancholy as a tool with which to create unforgettable pop songs. It's the most powerful song here, and the most immediately affecting.

However, after a few listens, the entire album started to grow on me. Songs like "Rewind," "Friday," and "Motorcade" don't sound like much on first listen, but they are deceptively catchy, and despite my initial lukewarm impression of "Tally of the Yes Men", I found myself returning to it over and over again, without necessarily knowing why. Every time I heard it, I liked it more and more. The closest comparison I could make would be to The Pernice Brothers--I didn't initially get why everyone was so into them, but I couldn't deny that I found myself listening to their CDs on an increasingly frequent basis. In fact, The Pernice Brothers are also a good reference point for the sort of melancholy melodies that Goldspot specialize in--though Joe Pernice and company tend to draw more from the 60s instead of the 80s, in the end, both bands have a very similar feel, and I enjoy them both quite a bit.

-5-

Now that I've caught up with all of the emo-ish stuff I've been digging over the past month, I will hopefully start posting more regularly again. I can already tell you that the next piece in my Spin audition saga will be coming up in the next few days: it's a review of "Meltdown" by Ash, and I've already written a draft of it. Check back here for that midweek, and although I don't like to promise anything as far as coming attractions (since I know how flaky I am about stuff), I think it's at least reasonably certain that I will be writing about the new Queens of the Stone Age album at some point in the near future. Til then...