As a child, I hated surprises. It was pure torture to know that you don’t know what you thought you knew and as a child know-it-all, this frustrated me.
But this past Friday, Say Anything surprised me and all their fans. How? Surprise album!
Unexpectedly, the band released their 7th studio album “I Don’t Think It Is†on Equal Vision Records. Their audience of grown-up punks woke up to find another consistently good album released by their favorite band of the millennium.
Max expressed that he has “become a bit weary of doing the same song and dance leading up to the actual endÂgame, people actually listening to something”, so he announced the album release and began streaming it 24 hours later, 1 day prior to the sales rack release. As Max’s music and career continue to grow, his philosophy towards the system behind to morph too. It’s probably the anarchy in his soul, or the tortured artist’s life.
You can hear the rasp in Max’s voice, as if the coke and drugs and age (but actually the reality of rock’n roll fatherhood with his two beautiful children and wife Sherri Dupree) have finally settled in. The album as a whole, in order, speaks as a longing for youth and liberation and friction alike. Thank you angst, thank you cigarettes, thank you poetry, thank you Max for the diversity in your voice, in this album, and throughout your discography overall.
This album as compared to Say Anything’s past albums …Is a Real Boy (2004) and Hebrews (2014) retains the high energy grit that defines the band, but also a new progressive sound to lighten the mood, Postal Service style (see track 3 Rum)
Say Anything takes us through light and dark moments with Max’s spitz of poetry and the progression of mood in aesthetic sound.
In a story of youth, drugs, disasters, feelings and nostaligia, and cocaine and nostalgia and burning out. But Nostalgia, this is probably the riding theme throughout the album. I feel as though Max is speaking to a past self, a youngin’ in their 20’s who lived through an all boys school, making decisions that affect life far more than one could have ever predicted, doing drugs because it’s easy, watching friends disappear, and that’s hard, letting real life settle in, getting older, burning out, turning thirty, figuring out the expectations you have or you had once before. How do you wanna feel? Who do you wanna be? Did it happen?
The middle of the album makes it all feel real. The timeline catches up and you remember using cocaine on Thursday nights often. Sometimes using other drugs, like the intense feeling from the music or the buoyancy of youth. As the album closes the acoustic guitar enters, the drums die down, the cymbals add a vibration at the right moment. You feel that time has caught up to the narrator. Nostalgia, it’s a hell of a theme.
The Faculty highly recommends Say Anything’s new album I Don’t Think It Is
Listen to the album start to end and tell me how you think the story of youth and easy decisions ended for him. Relate it to yourself. Comment Below.
Until Next Time,
Amanda Faculty
2 Comments