 "Photo:")
|
Sound the Alarm
Saves the Day Vagrant Records
|
Rocks like: The Promise Ring, Alkaline Trio, Weezer (Pinkerton era)
Believe it or not, there once was a time when "emo" wasn't such a laughable term. The Promise Ring capitalized on pop tunes with totally un-emo lines like "I got my body and my mind on the same page, and happiness is all the rage," Jimmy Eat World was enjoying pre- "The Middle" success with their near-perfect album Clarity, and the Get Up Kids were proving that not everything from the Midwest was boring. This, ladies and gentlemen, was the late '90s.
Then, like the Stock Market Crash of 1929, emo, too, fell from grace. The music went stale, with many of its fathering bands dissolving and being replaced by groups so boring and so generic that we actually started to lose hope in the entire genre.
Music scholars around the globe call this disastrous period of bland, mid-tempo, brooding and god-awful emo "The Hawthorne Heights Era." Emo got so caught up in its tired image as the music that speaks to the perpetually bummed-out teens of suburban America that it lost touch with its hardcore punk roots: the raw, restless and furious music of over two decades ago.
Few bands from emo's heyday have survived the dreadful Hawthorne Heights Era and lived to sing about it. But fear not, my broken-hearted brethren --- all is not lost. New Jersey sweetheart Saves the Day has released the fantastic Sound the Alarm, which just may be the album to restore respect to a genre of music lacking any today. So throw out (or burn, or sell or use as a Frisbee) your Senses Fail album and listen up.
Most famous for its moderate radio hit "At Your Funeral," Saves the Day has been releasing poppy punk tunes with more integrity than Blink 182 and more hooks than a tackle box since Can't Slow Down was released in 1998. Each of the band's subsequent releases, however, moved farther and farther from the infectious hardcore/pop-punk hybrid forged on the debut. With Sound the Alarm, the band has returned to form in a big way. Where Can't Slow Down showed signs of a young band still developing, Sound the Alarm sees the band playing with all the explosive, youthful energy and addictive sing-alongs of its debut, but with eight years more experience. And it shows.
The friendly, pop-punk band of 2001's Stay What You Are is long gone, and the quirky indie band of 2003's In Reverie left too. Both got the crap kicked out of them by the thunderous, down-and-dirty punk rock band of Sound the Alarm.
The sound captured on each of the album's 13 tunes is really like nothing the band has ever created. The most obvious change is front man Chris Conley's voice. Progressively getting higher and less threatening with each previous release, Conley's voice on this record is sharper and angrier than ever before --- somewhere between AFI's Davey Havok and Brand New's Jesse Lacey.
The band's guitar sound also gets a makeover. Previously, the band used distortion to get a punchy but soft sound; here, every guitar line has the growl that a good punk guitar should, and David Soloway's lead is consistently heavy and raging.
While the music of Saves the Day is something new here, Conley's dual talent for writing both catchy melodies that will addict listeners the first time and lyrics so personal they'd make Chris Carrabba blush remains the same. Part of emo's downfall was the generic lyrics of its worst bands, telling listeners exactly how they felt. Conley, no less emotionally wounded, prefers to show his fans through vivid, often gruesome descriptions and painful, melodramatic visuals.
The furious, anthemic "Shattered" is the perfect example. True to his self-deprecating form, Conley howls, "I pull out my tongue, tie it round my neck, hang myself alone in the dark… I can't stand my own face anymore, the mirror is on the floor shattered, a million pieces all crying please, don't forget about me." And you thought you had issues.
Not one to write about sunshine and lollipops, Conley's lyrics have always been on par with Matt Skiba of goth-punk masters Alkaline Trio in terms of being so damn dark. Sound the Alarm, however, marks the first time where the music backing Conley has the same grimy, sinister feel that his words do. "The End" could be the soundtrack to your worst nightmare, beginning with a bomb of hardcore punk percussion and screaming guitars. The storm clouds seem to part for a moment as the guitars slow, but it's just a trick --- the song's bridge drops like a surprise attack at half tempo with the album's most emo line: "I'm a danger to myself, got a grenade in my mouth… and my finger on the pin ready to rip it out."
Every other song is just as successful. "Delusional" has a haunting chorus My Chemical Romance wishes it could write. "Say You'll Never Leave" has all the desperation and dirty rock stomp of anything on Weezer's classic Pinkerton. Album closer "Hell is Here" lives up to its title; the track actually sounds like a punk rock apocalypse, featuring Conley at his most crazed, the rest of the band musically following him into insanity.
If the word "emo" makes you think of whiny white boys in tight pants and music that tries to break your heart, well, you're right. But with Sound the Alarm, Saves the Day proves that the genre can be so much more --- truer, rawer, darker, louder and entirely less laughable. If any album this year could put a nail in the coffin of The Hawthorne Heights Era and give emo a second chance, this is it. Good God, let's hope so.
