Posts Tagged ‘Say Anything’
Say Anythng – Say Anything
Lights up and six men dressed like Don Draper on a casual Sunday afternoon, minus the kick ass cardigan, launch into a frenzied set packed with energy, fury and rocking out with ones cock out. Central to this band of crazed young rockers is one Max Bemis, rock star, triple threat, recovering addict and brand new poster boy for living with bi-polar.
As the set grows and swells, Bemis, lead singer of Say Anything, becomes more disheveled, looking less like Don Draper with each passing moment of frenzied musical bliss, until he stands, catching his breathe, sweat dripping from his wife beater in front of a crowd of worshipers. Classic cuts like, Alive With The Glory of Love, Wow, I can get Sexual Too, Yellow Cat (Slash) Red Cat, Woo and Baby Girl I’m A Blur, which is an apt description of Say Anything live, have whipped the crowd into a frenzy that would put most riots to shame.
The first encore finds master Bemis, alone on stage, guitar slung around his neck for the first time of the night. The crowd convinces him to play A Walk Through Hell, and a tender moment as Max and the crowd perform an inspirational duet, singing every lyric together follows.
After the dust of the first encore settles, the band rejoins Max on stage and launch into Crushed, Spores and the incredibly scathing and genius of Admit It. With the encore done, so clearly is Bemis, and when he exits the stage, he is gone, done with this show that he just poured everything into.
There live show is not the only time that Bemis bares his soul and puts it out there for the whole world to judge. He does it every night on stage, and has once again pressed it into a disc for mass consumption.
While 2004’s Say Anything……Is A Real Boy first offered a glimpse into the psyche of the talented and troubled lead singer, and 2007’s varied double offering, Say Anything……In Defense Of The Genre, delved deeper into the darkest parts of Bemis’s mind and the most troubling times in his life, the just released Say Anything turns much of the focus outward onto the rest of the world. The subjects touched on Say Anything attack a world filled with power hungry, irresponsible people and painful love triangles while also taking on the subject of the demise of one of Bemis’s own relationships that dotted Defense and his new Marriage to Sherri Dupree of Eisley.
Nothing compares to hearing a song live for the first time. As Bemis spit the lyrics to Hate Everyone to a crowd filled with many who hadn’t heard the track yet, the venom and clarity with which Bemis alternated between the delicate hate of the verses and the bouncy chorus where over and over again, Bemis informs us, “I hate Everyone”, awakened the crowd to one of the Say Anything’s best new tracks.
Bemis taps into this anger again later on, on the track Young, Dumb and Stung, but points that anger in a more positive direction, aiming it at the people throughout your life who try and tear you down and make you doubt who you are. The lyrics “Don’t care what you think, you think I care.” Define a song where he rails against a childhood friend that turned his back on him and everyone else who would doubt who he is.
The circus feel to the opening of Mara and Me is classic Say Anything, and the song itself lives up to this feeling through the first few moments as Bemis talks about babies with guns and the Kings of Leon, before the music stops and he plainly speaks the words “Wait a second- I can’t write the same damn song over and over again.” From there the song goes schizophrenic with Jeff and Jake Turner helping out with vocals, and creating one of the stand out tracks on Say Anything.
Say Anything was said to be self titled to represent a starting over point for the band or a re-definition of who and where they are now, and the album manages to come through on this promise, as it introduces a band that is more confident in who they are and what they’re doing. The songs show Bemis’s ability to look outside of himself and still write awesome songs that walk the blurred lines between classic rock, pop punk and post everything. This Say Anything album is a walk through Bemis’s re-built life the way that …..In Defense Of The Genre was a walk through the ruins of his previous one.
Say Anything – Hate Everyone
Say Anything – Mara And Me
Say Anything – Young Dumb And Stung
Two Tongues
Two melancholy and emotionally damaged lead singers walk into a bar…..sounds like the beginning of a joke, but once you replace the bar with a recording studio, the joke turns into a album that is best described as group therapy.
Two Tongues is either a side project, or a super group, semantics really, comprised of Max Bemis and Coby Linder of Say Anything and Chris Conley and Dave Soloway of Saves the Day.
Both Bemis and Conley are well known for their hyper personal lyrics and wearing their neurosis proudly on their sleeves, and Two Tongues finds them trading off mental maladies in a sort o pseudo psychological pissing contest.
On the most recent Saves The Day Albums, Sound the Alarms and Under the Boards, the supposed first two albums in a trilogy, Conley poetically battles his own self loathing on songs like Alarm’s Shattered, as he belts out lyrics that expose his true feelings about himself:
I can’t stand my own face anymore/the mirror is on the floor/shattered a million eyes all crying please/please don’t forget about me
Bemis’s own experience with mental issues are well documented, from his own record companies ordering him to be given daily doses of anit-depression medication to the numerous tours which have been canceled due to his breakdowns. Some report have stated that during one breakdown he spent a half hour pouring a bowl of soup onto the ground one spoonful at a time, and screaming at children. This particular set of incidents lead to Say Anything dropping off of a tour with Bemis’s purported hero’s, none other than Conley and Saves The Day.
Following their self extraction from that particular tour, Bemis was checked into the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas, so that he could rehab from the recreational drugs he had been attempting to use to self medicate and allow him to deal head on with his bi-polar disease.
These struggles are documented, with an incredible level of honesty on Say Anything’s 2007 release, In Defense of the Genre. The double disc finds Bemis and a slew of friends ranging from Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazara who lends vocals to the track Surgically Remove the Tracking Device and Anthony Green who contributes vocals to the short Hangover Song, walking us through Bemis’s time in mental hospitals and rehab to life on both the recreational drugs and off them.
Even Saves the Day appear on the track, Sorry Dudes, My Bad, which documents the freak out that led to the dissolvement of their tour, through Bemis’s apologetic lyrics:
It’s too much to do on my own/my friends I need you now/I’m sorry that I wrecked that tour for us/the drugs left me wigging out on the bus
And so, with all of this baggage in tow Bemis and Conley trade lyrics documenting their own struggles and offering each other advice on how to deal with the feelings of self-loathing, depression and crippling doubt.
The album also finds the two of them trading of guitar riffs and finding a catchy simple sound that lands somewhere between Saves the Day and Say Anything, while Linder lays down the bass and Soloway drums along with the two front men.
But here’s no doubt that Two Tongues is all about the two singers, who at different points on the album find ways to properly blend their styles in a cohesive manner and at other, allow their points of view and their voices to wok just as effectively at odds with each other.
Conely’s high pitched tenor and poetic lyrics display what made him and Saves The Day, so popular and long lasting, while Bemis’s low growl and straight ahead delivery continue to distinguish him as one of today’s best song writers.
The album works as an excellent stop gap for fans waiting for STD’s Daylight, the culmination of the trilogy and Say Anything’s forth coming self titled follow up to ….Genre.
Two Tongues the album is as personal a journey as you are ever going to find with Bemis’s real life fiancé, Eisley’s, Sherri Dupree, contributing vocals, and making one of the albums most poignant observations on the track interlude:
And they meet/late on a Saturday/in the grip/of winter’s chapped lips/one’s blind/to all he has inside/one’s sure that he knows what life’s got in store.
Whether she’s speaking of Conely and Bemis or not, fans of Two Tongues can definitely hope that what life’s got in store is more collaboration from this young musician and his idol, turned friends, turned collaborators.
