Say Anything - ...Is A Real Boy (2004)

And the record begins with a song of rebellion...

This was the album, along with Set Your Goals' "Mutiny!", that was largely responsible for being the catalyst of my belated love affair with Pop Punk. It has several gateway qualities that make it perfectly approachable for someone who would normally flinch at the mention of Pop Punk: musically, it's very varied and bursting with awesome ideas, be it the Weezer-esque pop of 'Every Man Has a Molly', the splashes of synth on 'Yellow Cat (Slash) Red Cat', the shuffle of 'Alive With the Glory of Love' or the quasi-hardcore of 'Belt' and 'An Orgy of Critics'. Every song bears enough toe-tapping hooks to embed themselves in your brain from the first listen, but the album contains a lot of depth for such an unapologetically 'pop' album. The thing is, it's Max Bernis' lyrics that really make ...Is A Real Boy such a classic: bursting with wit, humour and painfully relatable verses, the words to these thirteen songs present us with a glimpse into the labyrinthine mess that is the young male psyche - if you've heard the album Alopecia by Why?, I could easily draw a lot of parallels between the two records in terms of lyrical content.

Well, okay, maybe not the average male psyche. Bernis has a history of serious mental problems: anxiety issues, bipolar disorder, drug abuse: the whole shebang. The very intro to the record makes this clear to us immediately: a recording of a conversation he held with his producer reveals the following admission: "I have to record the spoken word introduction to the record. It's only a few lines, but I'm having anxiety about it." Bernis initially intended the record to be a preposterously ambitious concept album complete with script and characters, with the focus being on "the artistic struggle, the fact that every creative person has this sick ambition to affect some sort of change in society with their art, to be more than just a guy in a band or a poet or a sculptor." However, the pressure of recording the album saw Bernis buckle, having a nervous breakdown and ending up spending weeks in an institution. ...Is A Real Boy is the band's second attempt at the album, this time with no over-ambitious script or narration: just a bunch of magnificent songs filled with poignant and often bitter ruminations that can sometimes get uncomfortably honest, touching on themes like artistry, people and their frustrating character flaws, drugs, and sex. Lots and lots of sex. If Rivers Cuomo was less happy-go-lucky and a hell of a lot more neurotic, this would be the album that he'd write.

Okay, let's get the sex part of it out of the way first, because this is Bernis we're talking about and this is something that preoccupies him a hell of a lot. One thing I love about Max Bernis is that, unlike many other songwriters, he doesn't try to give off the impression that he's any more enlightened or morally likeable than the next person. On the contrary, he's all too willing to expose his dirty flaws and ugly but sometimes scarily familiar thought patterns. 'Spidersong' is probably the most obvious example here: addressing (probably trying to seduce) a woman, it hints at a guilty conscience, the narrator very aware that he only wants sex while also aware that, meanwhile, she seeks affection. He treats it like a twisted game, manipulating her to his own ends, only to lazily declare that his heart's not in it, going in a few verses from this:

no more promises
i have made them before
and broken them
give me the go ahead
and i'll undress myself for you
if you're at all interested

to this:

i am cool
too cool to call you
far too stoned to leave my bed
i'll write this song to win your kiss
but stay asleep instead.

The song 'Every Man Has a Molly', one of the most instantly accessible songs on the album, a neurotic anthem that deals with an ex-girlfriend of his that broke up with him "over the revealing nature of the songs". It addresses the clash between his love life and his self-image as an artist, sarcastically pointing out the attention-seeking nature of the songwriter: "Molly Connolly ruined my life/I thought the world should know". The song has one of the most awesome lines in the album: "You god damn kids had best be gracious with the merch money you spend/Because for you I won’t ever have rough sex with Molly Connolly again". I mean, come on, that's funny stuff.
'Woe' similarly deals with the artistry/sex issue. Its opening lines sort of sum up the album: "All the words in my mouth/that the scene deemed unworthy of letting out/banded together to form a makeshift militia/and burrowed bloodily through my tongue and my teeth". These words are messy, unpleasant and certainly not all smiles and sunshine. One verse deals with his guilt and frustration with the fact that he is used for sex "most likely because of [his] band". The line "I can't get laid in this town without these pointy fucking shoes/my feet are so black and blue and so are you" is kind of a comment on the ridiculous way that people go all out to try and impress the opposite sex, night after night. The final half of this song is a more general expression of his frustration with the hypocrisy of his surroudings, and his desire to escape and surpass his environment which bogs him down. The last line, "I'm still the optimist, though it is hard/when all you want to be is in a dream" gets me every time.
Other songs obviously deal with this theme too: 'The Writhing South' is a rumination on lust, while 'Alive With the Glory of Love' appears at first to be a perfectly catchy love song but reveals itself to actually be a much darker story about a couple in love and "screw[ing] away the day" while in hiding during the holocaust.
'The Futile', an especially strong track, is a full-on doom-and-gloom fit of nihilism. Max states his mantra ("Eat, sleep, fuck and flee; in four words that's me") lamenting the futility of everyday life while declaring:

love! i shall not love
yet i’ll still sing about it
hope it covers the ocean in slime
the drama and drool
i’m leaking the blood of a fool

But just when you thought that Bernis had a totally fucked up perspective on sexuality and love, he goes ahead and writes a song like 'I Want to Know Your Plans', which is pretty simply just a really sweet, honest and gently humorous love song with no fancy trimmings or catches.

Some songs are, essentially, calling out various aspects of society on their bullshit. 'Belt', for example, is a rebellious statement about the music industry and an expression of Bernis' frustration with modern society. Meanwhile, 'Admit It!!!', the album closer, is a brilliant and very funny rant about hipster culture and the self-righteousness and hypocrisy that goes with it, ending the record on a rousing high note with the declaration "I'm proud of my life and the things that I have done/Proud of myself and the loner I've become/You're free to whine, it will not get you far/I do just fine, my car and my guitar".

My favourite track on the album is definitely 'Yellow Cat (Slash) Red Cat'. Over some really gorgeous pop production, Max writes a pretty much perfect set of lyrics that deal with the inevitability, predictability and unpreventable nature of various characters' personal flaws, essentially saying that these problems are a part of some people and are often so deep-seated that trying to change them is useless. The imagery is all fantastic and, brilliantly, can be taken either literally or metaphorically without changing the message of the song in any way. All of these characters have their own little repetitious flaws, from sexual dependancy to chronic laziness and tragic artistry, and the narrator feels that he can't do anything to change them, even seeing himself in these characters he's conjured. The final build of musical intensity accompanies a double-verse one-two punch that really hits close to home and sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it:

i watch my neighbor’s son play
with his shotgun in the street
i think i’ll blaze all day and marvel
at the mass of food i eat
it’s strange, i’m skinny when i’m standing
but i’m buddha when i sit
and if i’m truly so enlightened
why’d i waste your time on it?

as i look back at countless crossroads
and the middle where i stay
right up the beaten path to boredom
where the fakest fucks get laid
by the faux-finest finds it’s been that way
god damn you, how you stay
with every scummy, crummy hour
of the scummy, crummy day.

these are my friends
this is who they have been for always
these are my days
this is how they stay.

One word of warning: ...Is A Real Boy is an incredible album, one that I end up finding myself listening to quite a lot in periods of cynicism and frustration, but you won't find much in the way of enlightening Zen in it. Max Bernis' mind is full of ugly knots and dark corners - this album is simply a brilliant exploration of those knots, and one that might find you doing a similar bit of introspection. But do go ahead and give it a listen, because it's a real ear-opener that gets better with every listen and every read through the lyric sheet. I consider it a damn near perfect record.

Say Anything - ...Is A Real Boy

2008, #1: Off Minor - Some Blood

2008 was a crucial year for me in terms of personal growth. As inevitably happens in a person's first year living away from home at university, I went through an emotional rollercoaster that, I feel, ultimately reshaped me as a person and saw me going through a maturing process where I ended up confronting, reconsidering and coming to terms with all sorts of personal values and aspects of my personality. I guess one part of this accelerated personal growth was that my musical tastes matured quite a lot, or, at least, music played a different role in my life and I developed an increased appreciation for records that had both intelligence and emotional relevance.
In this regard, Off Minor were probably the biggest musical discovery for me last year. Records like The Heat Death of the Universe and Innominate really struck a chord with me with their perfect combination of intense emotional expression with thoughtful maturity, their music hanging in a careful balance between cathartic chaos and jazz-tinged beauty. Unlike some of their peers in the emotional hardcore scene, Off Minor's music never falls into the all-too-common trap of post-rock buildups and unnecessary self-indulgence (one could argue otherwise about 'Practice Absence' on the latest, album, but I will address this later) because every song is an intensely personal statement: the music is constantly ebbing and flowing between chaos and beauty in a very subtle manner, always mirroring the emotional realities that are expressed in the lyrics. These lyrics are very poetic and thoughtfully written, never descending into drama queen angst because they instead tend to be more observational: written from what appears to be a careful step back, they point out emotional truths in such a painfully poignant, concise and eloquent way that I often can't think of a more effective way in which to express them. While containing an impressive vocabulary and allowing for plenty of ambiguity and personal interpretation, Jamie Behar's lyrics often speak for themselves better than any one interpretation from a fan, something that I particularly like about Off Minor's lyrics. Here is an example of one of my favourite Off Minor songs lyrically, from their debut album The Heat Death of the Universe:

I told the new me:
"Meet me at the bus station and hold a sign that reads:
'Today is the first day of the rest of your life'"
But the old me met me with a sign that read:
"Welcome back"
Who you are is not a function of where you are.
-Off Minor; "The Transient"

Or, as an example from the new album, take the way 'To An Ex' perfectly sums up the bizarre thought processes that occur at the end of a relationship:

'oh, sweetest piece of me'
you say 'i've found your place in me has grown too small to fit
and still grows smaller everyday in retrospect.'
the me in you has changed,
the you in me still stays the same,
each has no bearing on the other,
so we could say of one another.
so sweetest piece of me,
it seems we'll take each other piece by piece apart
and place each in the safest place within our holding hearts.
-Off Minor; "To An Ex"

Some Blood, the band's latest effort, represents the latest step in Off Minor's musical progression, and from the maturity of the sound in here and the enormous respect that they have gained in the DIY hardcore community from their dedicated touring and their practically flawless output it would be absurd to argue that the band have still not shaken off the albatross hanging around their necks from former musical projects (most notably, screamo legends Saetia). Lyrically, where previous records were often very personal to the band members themselves, this is still just as emotionally powerful, but now mostly applicable as commentary on wider social trends and principles as well. Take 'Neologist', a comment on the problems of censorship, or 'Everything Explicit', a brilliantly poignant lament on the way that we all too often fail to communicate everything we would like to have said to another person before it's too late. The title track and 'Practice Absence' both seem to have extremely personal subtexts, but they are masked by so much ambiguity that, while they are still extremely powerful pieces of poetry, they are very much subject to individual interpretation.

Musically, the album manages to pack a lot of ideas into its 22-minute runtime: the jarring but extremely compelling dissonant rhythms of 'Neologist', the snaking guitar lines of 'Some Blood', the rapid-fire chord progressions of the 43-second 'No Conversationalist I' (which, brilliantly, mirrors its lyrical content - a concise reflection on the narrator's ineptitude at conversation - in its brevity and awkwardness) or the more drawn-out 'Practice Absence'. The latter is a bit of a departure for Off Minor, breaking their general trend of relative conciseness at almost nine minutes, perhaps being the first time that they have written a song that builds up slowly to "epic" conclusions. It's also the first time that they've included properly sung vocals as opposed to the urgent yelping of most songs. Both of these moves are made all the more effective by the way that they contrast with the rest of the band's material, meaning that these ideas work in this context. One could also argue that the drawn-out nature of the song is not for the sake of self-indulgence but rather mirrors the themes of distance, removal and absence that the song deals with. My personal favourite song, however, is 'Everything Explicit': one of the most perfect songs I've heard in a while, it ebbs and flows beautifully, being at the same time perfectly composed and amazingly passionate. The intricate instrumental interplay - one of Off Minor's biggest strengths throughout their discography - is here at its peak, the flawlessly tight grooves giving every instrument an opportunity to shine, gracefully building up to a melodic but nevertheless extremely cathartic, compelling and urgent conclusion. The melodic interplay between the guitar and bass in the clean midsection just before the final distorted conclusion of the song is one of those details that one sometimes picks up in music that is very subtle but which still makes me melt inside. The song sounds sort of like an interpretation of something off of Unwound's Leaves Turn Inside You in a hardcore context. In other words, that means it's really, really good.

There are rumours that this might end up being Off Minor's final release, but if it is, then they've accomplished a hell of a lot, sporting one of the most consistently brilliant discographies I've seen from any band. It is very hard for me trying to identify faults with this record, as every time I listen it engages me perfectly both emotionally and intellectually, providing a perfectly cohesive and hugely enjoyable listening experience. Adhering to the "shorter is better" rule common to hardcore, there is very little wiggle room when it comes to quality here, also ensuring that one never gets bored throughout the record's duration. Simply put, Off Minor have pushed hardcore punk to an unprecendented level of complexity, poeticism and emotional maturity, and the standard that this sets for other contemporary hardcore bands is phenomenal. Listen to this to understand why they've quickly become one of my all-time favourite bands over the course of the last year. I'm also chucking in The Heat Death of the Universe and Innominate, because they're also pretty much perfect records.

What’s best left unsaid? A speaker spent, a listener left with regrets in his stead. In a life of loss, silence can cost you more than you expect. Held tongues relate a bitter taste when prone to reminisce. Anamnestic but recipient absent, the circuit’s dead. As we live linear lives, unidirectional, towards an inevitable end and we must make everything explicit. That’s how we left it: unsaid. I’m at a loss for words.
-Off Minor, Everything Explicit

Off Minor - Some Blood (official label website: pay-what-you-want scheme)
Off Minor - Innominate
Off Minor - The Heat Death of the Universe

The Cold Return

As another hectic semester draws to an end I find myself with a little more time on my hands than usual. Or, rather, I'm decidedly ignoring the fact that i have two essays due and four exams to take after the Christmas holidays. I'll be taking this opportunity to get back to updating this blog hopefully a little more frequently, with plenty of music for you to feast your ears on, as well as providing the obligatory rundown of my favourite records from 2008. Watch this space.

The record I've been listening to the by far the most recently is Gospel's The Moon is a Dead World. Produced by Kurt "Midas Touch" Ballou of Converge, the record is, sadly, the only studio output the band have ever released. The band sound like what you would expect City of Caterpillar, perhaps, to sound like if they were closet Yes fans. In other words, Gospel play intense hardcore with massive prog leanings - insane drumming, psychedelic riffage, keyboard solos and nine-minute epics. This might sound absurd on paper, but The Moon is a Dead World is one of the most visceral, compelling and straight up awesome records ever to grace my ears. Its dense and dark racket will overwhelm on the first couple of listens, but every subsequent listen will reveal new nuances and amaze even more than the last time. Your ears will start to isolate awesome moments: be it the blinding riffage in 'Yr Electric Surge is Sweet', the superb melodic and dynamic changes of the epic 'A Golden Dawn', the stuttering rhythmic breakdown in 'And Redemption Fills The Emptiest of Hearts', the build and climax of 'What Means of Witchery' or the furious keyboards of 'As Far As You Can Throw Me'. Before long, you'll not only realise how tight and damn-near perfect this album is - you'll find that you're addicted to its propulsive dynamics and practically flawless instrumentation. In the realm of emo, The Moon Is a Dead World has little or no match in terms of how inventive and cohesive it is - fans of Circle Takes The Square and their ilk should probably download this. Right now.


I've also been listening to quite a lot of Harvey Milk. One of the more underrated bands in the field of sludge, it's suprising that, given their eccentric approach to the genre, more fans of bands such as Kayo Dot or Boris haven't picked up on them - or, rather, their early releases, which are particularly spectacular. They have admittedly received a bit of a buzz recently due to their most recent release Life... The Best Game in Town, touted by the likes of Pitchfork as a return to form. As entertaining as that album is, it seems to lack the extremity and astounding sense of experimentation that one finds in the band's early work, and thus comes off as comparatively lacklustre. My Love is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, the band's debut, is a perfect place to start with Harvey Milk. The opening track 'A Small Turn of Human Kindness' throws you into experimental territory straight away: as an ominous cymbal counts the song in, one expects to be bombarded with sludge filth straight away. But Harvey Milk don't work that way: they choose, instead, to mess with their listeners' heads - playing around with keyboard noodling for a bit before reverting to cymbal counts, and then messing about a little more with some creepy strings. and then about three and a half minutes in, the real onslaught starts: one of the most vile, evil riffs you're ever likely to hear, backed by thunderous drums and horrible bass, rears its ungodly head. The band uses extended periods of (near-)silence, carefully controlled tempos and unconventional instrumentation (including the odd folk ballad) to contribute to the general disorienting effect of the album, along with the employment of a singer who could just as easily be a pissed-off walrus as be a human being. All of this leaves you wondering what you've just been hit by, but knowing one thing for sure: you've just heard one of the best experimental sludge albums you're ever likely to hear.

The follow-up to My Love..., the ironically titled Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men, dives into an even more serious - and sometimes surprisingly emotional - side of Harvey Milk's sound, while still retaining the experimental edge of their debut that makes the band so special and rewarding. One might argue that Courtesy is a bit more cohesive as an album than its predecessor, as it retains a constant feeling of utter gloom and misery throughout, while the predecessor tends to inject the band's bizarre sense of humour into tracks that otherwise might be more depressing, as well as having a few more particularly upbeat tracks among its numbers. The negativity of Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men is not necessarily to its detriment, but it certainly means that the album tends to lend itself a lot more towards moods where the listener is feeling a lot more, say, despondent. It has some disarmingly poignant moments: particularly the emotional climax of the album, a straightforward acoustic cover of Leonard Cohen's 'One of Us Cannot Be Wrong', a song that lends itself rather well to the singer's bizarre voice and is a surprisingly effecting respite in what is mostly a crushingly heavy sludge album. On an album full of highlights, one song to watch out for is the marvellously tense and evil opener 'Pinocchio's Example' which features - get this - a hoover. Yep, seriously. Also listen out for the interestingly structured and at times downright vile 'Sunshine (No Sun) Into the Sun', a great centrepiece - it starts with thirty seconds of a misleadingly charming ballad before propelling you straight into a black hole of downtuned bass and absurd guitar noise that lasts for the rest of the song. Nice. Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men may not be the most chirpy or upbeat of albums but it is certainly a powerful listen, and is one of the best sludge albums I've heard in a long time.


I'm also throwing in the new Glassjaw song as a bonus because, well, it fucking shreds.

Gospel - The Moon is a Dead World
Harvey Milk - My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be
Harvey Milk - Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men
Glassjaw - You Think You're John (Fucking) Lennon

Converge - Jane Doe

Jane Doe is probably my favourite record ever. If not, it certainly comes close. I wouldn't normally post something like this because I assume that the two or three people that actually bother to read this would be familiar with this album. But then I had this staggering realisation that, you know, there are people who haven't heard this album, or people who, worse, don't "get" it. It saddens me that people are missing out on something so incredible. Well, here's your chance to repent.

Jane Doe is an album and needs to be heard as such. I need to stress the importance of this. It is a cohesive experience, the expression of and expansion upon a single emotion to overwhelming effect. It is highly unlikely that you are going to "get" Jane Doe just by listening to Concubine or The Broken Vow as standalone songs. Every moment in this album contributes to the next, hurtling madly towards those last three minutes of the title track. The album is a perfect example of the powerfully cathartic nature of hardcore: a comprehensive outpour of an emotion, like wringing water from a sponge until nothing is left.

This album is a rollercoaster of emotion recorded in the aftermath of a heartbreak that left Jacob Bannon feeling low and damaged. It shows, because all the associated emotions are there: from the shock, denial and desperation following loss to the ensuing feelings of spite and hatred, the nadir of defeat, depression and self-loathing, the cold grip of loneliness and, tucked away in a corner somewhere but nevertheless present, hope.

The lyrics, for one, are stunning. They don't necessarily match up to the music in a linear fashion - rather, Jacob Bannon writes them like poetry, then uses them as inspiration for the songs, lifting lines and placing them in appropriate places for maximum impact. Take Concubine's desperate cries of "Dear, I'll stay gold just to keep these pasts at bay", Bitter and then Some's vitriolic chant "Death to cowards, traitors and empty words" or the beautiful penultimate part of the title track "Lost in you like Saturday nights/Searching the streets with bedroom eyes/Just dying to be saved" and you have just some examples of Bannon's skilled and heartfelt lyricism. There is a particularly haunting passage in Hell to Pay, as another example, that really sums up the kind of engulfing depression that takes its hold post-heartbreak:

"That night, I think he cried himself to sleep
Just maybe, he felt more than we could ever know
And I think he pulled that trigger to empty that memory
I think he cut the weight to end the floods of you
Let him soar, let him ride as budding gravestones do
Just sleep, girl, just dream well"

Jane Doe, of course, isn't anything without the music. And what sublime music it is: from the discordant opening measures of Concubine the listener is thrown into some of the most intense, chaotic music ever written. The mood varies; from raucous and chaotic in Homewrecker and Bitter and then Some to pensive in Hell to Pay, with its enormous bassline, and epic in Phoenix in Flight. There is a sense of uncontrollable and climactic chaos throughout the album, untamed amounts of passion that are hard to find in any other album. One particular highlight is The Broken Vow, an anthem that finishes on the rousing and desperate chant "I'll take my love to the grave". There are some interesting but also successful experiments on the album such as the eerie "Phoenix in Flames", a short slice of chaos that sees the band stripping themselves down to a core of drums and vocals. Thaw is also particularly climactic with its jarring riff and its crushing closing chord sequence. This still serves as a mere warmup for the album's title track. There's a rather clichéd phrase that goes "it's always darkest before the dawn" - to me, much of the song Jane Doe represents that state of rock bottom. It charts that feeling of hopelessness, of being completely lost. There's a moment about 45 seconds into the dirge where Bannon suddenly switches gears into a voice that's so different to his usual scream that it's ethereal, singing "I want out" like a desperate cry for help. It's one of the most incredibly affecting parts of the album. The song repeats itself in a cyclic pattern, spiraling more and more into that pit of despair until something happens - something changes. There's a break in the music, and a wonderful sense of space and release. There is one final chorus, like a sigh put to music, before it kicks in. A searing crescendo that has so much intensity that it could easily rival anything that Godspeed You! Black Emperor have ever written, rising out of the gloom like a phoenix in flight, the culmination of so many things gone wrong but perhaps a sign of determination to move past those events, a sign of hope. And that concludes not only the best album closer these ears have ever heard, but perhaps the best album too. Jane Doe is an album of limitless passion and honesty, an intensely personal statement that stands as an incredible work of art. Whether screaming, chaotic hardcore is your thing or not, take a chance on this album - spend some time with it, get to know it well, and perhaps, soon enough, you too will feel its rewards. If you haven't felt anything by the time that culminating crescendo fades out, you can't be human.

Those nights we had and the trust we lost
The sleep that fled me and the heart I lost
It all reminds me
Just how callous and heartless the true cowards are
And I write this for the loveless
And for the risks we take
I'll take my love to the grave
As tired and worn it is
I'll take my love to the grave
-Converge; The Broken Vow