I'm going to explore opposite ends of my spectral musical
tastes now:
When you think of "emo", there's almost always a stereotypical corniness that materializes in your head. Dorky guys in thick glasses playing their own sappy, monotonous, redundant and unoriginal renditions of "Boys Don't Cry" over and over. Nerdy little teenagers sitting outside of Starbucks playing an acoustic guitar, singing like the mousy and nasal prepubescent ankle-biters they are. I, myself, having been one of the dorkiest dorks of them all, heard a couple emo/indie rock albums in my ankle-biting years, that completely broke the mold and stood out to me like a ray of sunshine in the dead of winter.
When you think of "emo", there's almost always a stereotypical corniness that materializes in your head. Dorky guys in thick glasses playing their own sappy, monotonous, redundant and unoriginal renditions of "Boys Don't Cry" over and over. Nerdy little teenagers sitting outside of Starbucks playing an acoustic guitar, singing like the mousy and nasal prepubescent ankle-biters they are. I, myself, having been one of the dorkiest dorks of them all, heard a couple emo/indie rock albums in my ankle-biting years, that completely broke the mold and stood out to me like a ray of sunshine in the dead of winter.
The Get Up Kids - Something to Write Home About....I'll
be honest....I heard this record when I was 14. I was at the peak of my
poseur-ness, completely confused, not sure if I was a "punk-rocker", a
"metal-head", or a "hardcore-kid". I guess transitional
and/or random music, when you're a teen, is what makes you
realize..."Hey...I can like any type of music I want, I don't have to
conform to a certain trend and maybe I'll start dressing like a normal human
being now." What a weird realization, but, I feel like this album helped
me realize that I'm ME and fuck anyone who says I'm not cool enough to fit into
a certain crowd. Why? Because I was wearing plaid pants and putting glue in my
hair every morning before I went to school, so, listening to a lame emo band
was an extremely foreign thing and not punk rock enough for 14 year-old me.
I put this record on and holy shit, the opening guitars
and vocal melodies had me hooked instantly. It was like someone took the early
simplicity of the Cure, the raw musicality of a Seattle grunge band and the
honesty and frailty of a Beatles ballad & subtly rolled it all up into one
beautiful burrito of sound. I wasn't very familiar with contemporary mid-tempo, light
music yet. The happiest or sappiest things I'd known at this point were, as
stated, the Cure, the Beatles, and maybe...the happier Ramones and Green Day songs. There's an
abundance of clean, twangy guitars and piano-styled keyboards, over-predominantly major-keyed, compromisingly forgiving (for a lack of less
masculine words) song structures. These were songs any confused, distraught and
angst-ridden youngster could relate to. I mean, shit, I dated a girl who made
me a card, on Valentine's Day, decorated and done up with the lyrics to
"I'll Catch You" written out.
To conclude, the best way to put it: all of the best qualities of indie rock, upbeat punk,
synth-pop and general emo-tion, if you will, blender set to "pulse"
instead of full-power. (I hope you guys aren't getting tired of my cheesy
metaphors yet). I'll save it for another post, but Jimmy Eat World's
masterpiece "Clarity", is regarded, among the general indie and emo
connoisseur population, to be the #1 emo rock record of all time....I think The Get Up
Kids' "Something to Write Home About" was and still is one peg up on the emo totem poll.
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