Category Archives: four year strong

I guess you call this regression

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I’ve spent this year as a ghost and I’m not sure where home is anymore.

Currently on Warped Tour touting their third full-length album, The Wonder Years is a band of Pennsylvania buddies whose albums progress through a story. This album, Suburbia: I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing is inspired by the rambling poem “America” by Allen Ginsberg, a small snippet of which appears below:

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

Their sound is pretty much the same as that of Four Year Strong, and I don’t suppose that is a bad thing. In fact, Alan and Dan from FYS supply guest vocals on track 6, “Summers in PA.” I’m diggin on track 5, “My Life As a Pigeon.” Apparently the cohesive story is supposed to be the band’s complaints about touring, but I still like how some of the complaints can be translated to life.

Click to Enjoy The Wonder Years – My Life As A Pigeon

And with that, I ask you to embrace beardcore. Yes, it is just going to keep happening. We are going to keep subdividing musical genres until everyone gets their identity boxed right up for you. I happily use the term because it was pretty much named for Four Year Strong, a band I will always respect. What the hell, though. We analyze and categorize every goddamn detail of our lives as we try to justify its worth;, we might as well analyze and categorize our art too.

The Wonder Years actually does a very nice job tying this album up and allowing the inspiration from the poem to shine through with more than just an homage in the title. You can find snippets throughout the tracks, song names, and a summation in the final track on the album, “And Now I’m Nothing.”

Click to Enjoy The Wonder Years – And Now I’m Nothing

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

I like antiphony

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Taking Back Sunday
I was chatting with TLO on my way home from the office Wednesday. She was talking about how she had recently gotten a few CDs from a friend that was returning the favor after she turned him on to Four Year Strong, Bayside, and Meg and Dia. Apparently he fell head over heels about those bands, and that’s the payoff my friends. This is why we even put in the blood sweat and tears into this very blog. We love that feeling when someone falls in love with a band that we told them about.

Back to the story…

I asked her, “Well…what are you gonna hook him on next?” She replied, “I tried a few other bands, but they fell short for him. No one else sounds like FYS and Bayside.” Well… I HAD to agree.

Even after what I am about to share this week, the statement is still true. No band sounds like Bayside. There will never be another band like Four Year Strong.

but…

You could find “Band B” that happens to have all the same things you like about “Band A”.

I am of course talking about iTunes Genius and Pandora. We have mentioned iTunes Genius in one of our podcasts, but I’d like to talk specifically about Pandora. Both the iTunes Genius and Pandora use a formula for determining recommendations of new songs based on songs/bands you already like.

Pandora, specifically, uses the technology provided by the Music Genome Project. In a nutshell, it takes characteristics of a band/song and matches it with bands/songs that have similar characteristics within a certain range of difference. Like if a band has a male singer that writes emo-type lyrics usually in a minor key, it will recommend other songs that have male singers that also have emo-ish lyrics in minor keys. The characteristics that make up a song are known as its genome. Musicians analyze songs to put together these characteristics, which make it a little more scientific than some punk kid saying simply: “They sound just like the Foo Fighters.”

To best describe all that Pandora is, I created two stations. One based on Bayside and one based on Four Year Strong.

The first one is Bayside.

Bayside Station
Pandora selected many great bands and songs for my Bayside station, most notably Taking Back Sunday and the song My Blue Heaven. Why TBS? Well, its genome similarities to Bayside are:

basic rock song structures
mild rhythmic syncopation
a clear focus on recording studio production
mixed minor & major key tonality
string section beds
a vocal-centric aesthetic
mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation
electric guitar riffs
vocal harmonies

[Download Taking Back Sunday – My Blue Heaven]

I like Taking Back Sunday, but in my opinion, Bayside is far better, deeper, and more profound than TBS. I definitely don’t mind it showing up in my Bayside Radio playlist though!

Now, let’s see how Pandora does with Four Year Strong.

Four Year Strong Station

One of the first recommendations was a band called Set Your Goals and their song Mutiny.

[Download Set Your Goals – Mutiny]
Here are the characteristics that make this a good recommendation based on Four Year Strong:

punk roots
great lyrics
heavy use of vocal harmonies
call and answer vocal harmony (Antiphony)
major key tonality
paired vocal harmony
dirty electric guitar riffs
an aggressive male vocalist
prominent drums

I love this band on first listen! Enough to go to Amazon and buy it! The best part was that I had never heard of Set Your Goals before Pandora suggested them! [edit by TLO: I did. They are actually touring with Bayside right now. But they were also on the lineup for a Big D And The Kids Table show that we ended up skipping quite a long time ago. LOL] Mission accomplished! Maybe Pandora will help you find some new music? The one thing is that you might miss more cutting-edge indie bands by just relying on Pandora and the Music Genome Project, so you better bookmark inALLcaps.com just to make sure you don’t miss something amazing!

At least that means I have a soul left to lose

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“‘Bears don’t want to eat people. We don’t taste that good.’ He grinned at me in the dark cab. ‘Of course, you might be an exception. I bet you’d taste good.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I said, looking away. He wasn’t the first person to tell me that.”

Have you read New Moon yet? It’s the second book in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. I read the whole series and it was a good experience; it touched me in a lot of ways… But I just kept hoping for better. More eloquent writing. Prose that would stick with me and paint a better picture. It was, alas, a Young Readers series. I shouldn’t have expected so much.

[Senses Fail – Wolves At the Door]

Like Senses Fail. I keep trying to like them.

I don’t know what it is. They make use of the double bass pedal. They scream a little but not too much. They layer their guitars. But Senses Fail just refuses to grab me and either rock my face off or move me with really strong lyrics.

Their lyrics are better than many others. Better than most that get airplay, that’s for sure. And the sound has gotten better over the last few years. Maybe I just expect more. They don’t sound better than most bands that have been formed this decade. They’re definitely not better than Four Year Strong.

“Life Is Not A Waiting Room” is the fourth album put out by this quartet lead by Buddy Nielsen, who is actually the son of some of my mom’s favorite soap stars. Remember Iva Snyder from As The World Turns? I digress. The songs Senses Fail has recorded over the years have always been inspired by deep writings and works of art, and even their name comes from a eastern spiritual beliefs. But they just don’t go far enough with it. If I was writing their report card I would say “you need to apply yourself more.” Just because it’s not pop-punk about a girl who left you doesn’t mean you can’t get deeper than you already are. You can do it.

I did find Blackout to be one of the stronger tracks. Check it out:

[Senses Fail – Blackout]

I will keep watching and waiting. I know they have something to say. But they can say it louder, I am sure of it. But hey, I know one music snob in particular who just LOVES them. You might find what I can’t. Check them out: