Posts Tagged ‘Under The Boards’
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.
