Say Anything – Say Anything
RCA Records, Released November 3, 2009
4 out of 5 stars
Say Anything’s fourth album is self-titled, which normally signifies for a band an album of self-discovery, extreme change, or great accomplishment. Say Anything fits the part well. The famed emo band’s newest album contains some of the group’s strongest, most listenable songs to date without sacrificing what made the band so great to begin with. In a world where almost every emo band is actually an emo-pop tool singing overproduced, sugar-coated-candy-for-radio songs, Say Anything fights against the culture with addicting and harshly real songs that mix the emo genre with elements of rock, punk, R&B, shoegaze, ska and electro.
Singer/brain Max Bemis uses this song set to document his recent adventures of finding love, coming to grips with God, and loathing today’s pop culture. Say Anything’s most cohesive record to date, every song supplies its share of genre mix-and-mash mayhem and strong vocal hook and delivery – every song is a standout, as opposed to 2007’s In Defense of the Genre , which was twice the length and had plenty of forgettable, overshadowed tracks.
The overall style of the album is quite palpable and easy to sing along to, often sounding surprisingly similar The Rocket Summer. The album starts with the wonderful “Fed to Death,” a short acoustic prologue. Next up is the raging lead single “Hate Everyone” about a boy who hates everything in his life. Many of the album’s songs tackle such sad topics, but they are always performed with suave and swagger. “Death for My Birthday” for example would be extremely cheerful if not for its lyrics, containing the refrain “I want death, death for my birthday.” Regardless, every song is a great slab of pop. Some of the songs, like the boy-loves-girl “Crush’d,” do attack lighter fare, and the result is always the same: maddeningly fun emo pop from a man meticulously studying his character and composing daring pieces of 21st century rock at its prime.
Best Songs: “Fed to Death” “Do Better” “Cemetery” “Death for My Birthday
