I thought I had pop punk and emo pretty well figured out until I got to college and met a bunch of people who were exactly like me, but who'd grown up in Atlanta or South Carolina or Tennessee. And their brand of pop punk and emo was completely different from mine.
I was going to say that this was a geographic difference, because I was into Mid-Atlantic bands like The Starting Line and Senses Fail that were bigger back home, but somehow Yellowcard got into my group despite being from Florida, while the Greater Atlanta pop punk kids were into California bands: Hellogoodbye, Jupiter Sunrise, and Say Anything.
That last one was huge, because while Say Anything never penetrated my insular group of a couple dozen friends from back home, everyone I went to college with loved them, and ...Is A Real Boy turned into the most-listened-to album of my freshman year of college.
The most notable song off ...Is A Real Boy was "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too," because 18-year-olds will go bonkers for a song whose chorus goes "I called her on the phone and she touched herself. The best song off ...Is A Real Boy is "Alive With The Glory Of Love," which is peppy and earnest and fun to play on guitar, until you realize it's about young lovers trying to survive the Nazis, and is based on the lives of lead singer Max Bemis's grandparents, both of whom survived the Holocaust. At which point it becomes extremely powerful and also very uncomfortable to play at a kegger.
Somewhere in the middle is "The Writhing South," which is, for lack of a better way to describe it, the song I'd put on my headphones if I had to walk to the bottom of a hill to beat the shit out of someone.
And yet even that doesn't tell the whole story, because "Hey, come pollinate me, hey" is one of those catch and weird Say Anything lines, and for all the thumping bass and big groups of people shouting and concussive drums, the greatest attribute of "The Writhing South" is its use of auditory white space. You get the full broadside in this song pretty early, but it keeps your attention by pulling different elements back at different times, and even when it gets quiet, it maintains its forward motion, pulling you forward at a quick-step, like someone's tied one end of a rope to a drum kit rolling down a hill and looped the other end around your waist.
I'll be honest--I had other things to say about this song, but I've forgotten what they are, because now all I want to do is put my forehead through a piece of sheetrock.
I was going to say that this was a geographic difference, because I was into Mid-Atlantic bands like The Starting Line and Senses Fail that were bigger back home, but somehow Yellowcard got into my group despite being from Florida, while the Greater Atlanta pop punk kids were into California bands: Hellogoodbye, Jupiter Sunrise, and Say Anything.
That last one was huge, because while Say Anything never penetrated my insular group of a couple dozen friends from back home, everyone I went to college with loved them, and ...Is A Real Boy turned into the most-listened-to album of my freshman year of college.
The most notable song off ...Is A Real Boy was "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too," because 18-year-olds will go bonkers for a song whose chorus goes "I called her on the phone and she touched herself. The best song off ...Is A Real Boy is "Alive With The Glory Of Love," which is peppy and earnest and fun to play on guitar, until you realize it's about young lovers trying to survive the Nazis, and is based on the lives of lead singer Max Bemis's grandparents, both of whom survived the Holocaust. At which point it becomes extremely powerful and also very uncomfortable to play at a kegger.
Somewhere in the middle is "The Writhing South," which is, for lack of a better way to describe it, the song I'd put on my headphones if I had to walk to the bottom of a hill to beat the shit out of someone.
And yet even that doesn't tell the whole story, because "Hey, come pollinate me, hey" is one of those catch and weird Say Anything lines, and for all the thumping bass and big groups of people shouting and concussive drums, the greatest attribute of "The Writhing South" is its use of auditory white space. You get the full broadside in this song pretty early, but it keeps your attention by pulling different elements back at different times, and even when it gets quiet, it maintains its forward motion, pulling you forward at a quick-step, like someone's tied one end of a rope to a drum kit rolling down a hill and looped the other end around your waist.
I'll be honest--I had other things to say about this song, but I've forgotten what they are, because now all I want to do is put my forehead through a piece of sheetrock.
