Category Archives: max bemis

the future’s cloudy and gray

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so can I lie in your grave at the edge of the end of the world

where I will sit with my love, in its fluorescent swirl

eat us up, break it down to the tiniest cell

in a room with a view and a window to hell

with those who bury bodies into barrels of fun

will be marched through museums that display what they’ve done

they’ll be shot up through the sky by the cannon of sin,
and we’ll reluctantly let them in

Max Bemis is an evangelist for my generation. His sermon delivered with song and lyric.

I’m a Say Anything fan. From their first release Junior Varsity to their latest self titled release, I just enjoy all of this bands albums. The albums are filled with sing-a-long anthems. Shameless and A Walk Through Hell are some examples of his earlier work.

Easily a favorite of mine from the album …Is A Real Boy is Admit It! A song you can crank up and belt along with Max.

You’re free to whine. It will not get you far. I do just fine, my car and my guitar, guitar go!

Download Say Anything – Admit It!

The album In Defense Of The Genre was a double album of…well…of mostly filler. I am of the opinon that if this double album was pared down to a solid single release, it would have been a more successful endeavor. The anthems are still here, you just might have to skip around the album. Check but Baby Girl, I’m A Blur.

Download Say Anything – Baby Girl, I’m a Blur

I got my hands on the latest album before the November 3rd release date. It reminds me more of …Is A Real Boy than Defense. My first real listen to this album was driving back home from a long day at work. I enjoyed the album, but the last song. Track 13. Like any good preacher, it ends with a big and resounding AMEN!

Download Say Anything – Ahh…Men

Ahh…Men is a stellar song. Chanting, passionately sung lyrics, a song with a strong and heavy message. I knew right away this song was important to Max. Even while navigating the busy streets in rush hour I knew this was an important song.

I’m rarely wrong about these things:

@ummAndrew asks what the deepest song I’ve written is; probably ahhh men because it concerns god the afterlife redemption eternity etc

Don’t be a sinner and steal this album off the torrents, buy this album. Else face hell and brimstone.

Amen.

I talk in between when you’re looking away

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I heard a song on the radio and for a moment I thought it was Saves The Day’s “Do You Know What I Love The Most?” But alas, it seems like none of Saves The Day’s songs have ever been played on corporate airwaves. Wouldn’t life be so much better if we could switch the dial and hear something like this?

[Download Saves The Day – Do You Know What I Love The Most?]

Saves The Day, headed by Chris Conley, has spent more than a decade inspiring other alternative acts and entertaining the youth of America with their pre-mathcore (you like that one?!)punk ballads and sorrowful self-loathing diatribes. But my favorite StD song is another love song, “Always Ten Feet Tall.”

[Download Saves The Day – Always Ten Feet Tall]

One of the bands that formed in the shadow of, and grew to become contemporaries of StD is Say Anything. Max Bemis fronts this band and is backed by four friends.

Max and Chris grabbed a former Saves the Day member and a current Say Anything member to form a collaboration record called Two Tongues. There’s no better way to describe the band than as Max says on their MySpace page:

“The Two Tongues record is really an expression of the yin and yang; how two “opposite” souls stimulate and battle each other in any truly loving relationship. Chris inspired me as a mentor, hero and friend, and I inspired him as someone who truly cherishes his work that he can respect in his own right. Chris sometimes looks down on himself but is inside a very strong, almost Buddha-like centered soul; I have that whole Steven Tyler/Jerry Lewis extrovert personality onstage but I’m a totally neurotic, restless soul inside. We as two people, therefore, express two sides of a coin.”

If you followed the Say Anything link to the blog post I wrote about them back in August, you would know I love the two bands almost equally.

So I should love Two Tongues. I’ve tried so many times. It’s been out for three months, and I am just now writing this. (Well, that’s mostly because of the whole false excitement over the radio thing this morning.) [edit][update]By the way, it’s the intro to Blink 182’s My Girlfriend. I like that song, but I hate that the local “eggstreeeeeme” station thinks that is has to be played every single morning.

The album starts out with Max’s powerful voice, a lead guitar and percussion with the strength of an angry Say Anything album, and the haunting background keys reminiscent of a Saves the Day song. Then Chris joins in on vocals, and it sounds like the perfect blend of two soulful sounds. But then Track 2, with the two trading off lines as if they are singing to each other, causes sufficient creepiness as you wonder just what the hell is going on? Listeners are just plain confused. Is Conley playing the part of some girl who dumped Bemis? Is Bemis consoling Conley over the demise of Saves the Day? Or is this just an internal dialog and a wildly experimental song?

The album doesn’t lose the creepiness factor as it moves along, unfortunately. Believe me. I said it before; I want to love it so much. It’s moving to imagine two artists, whom I respect so much, getting the opportunity to be creative in this way. But I really could live without hearing Chris Conley singing “Hey there boy, you’re beautiful.” In case I haven’t already protested ad nauseum, I love the sensitivity these two have been able to convey on all their previous music. But this just went too far for me; maybe I just need my men to err on the side of The Beast With Impenetrable Feelings.

Just kidding.

Kind of.

Well, here. Listen for yourself. This is one of the tracks that those who enjoyed the album claim “saves it” from the rest of the weak second half. Listen to Wowee Zowee:

[Download Two Tongues – Wowee Zowee]

I can’t say anymore. I’ve said enough. You know how I feel. Tell me what you think. I’ve seen both bands live. I love them. I’ve got all the old stuff and rare stuff and unreleased stuff. I’m just not smellin’ this record.

And these hazards of love nevermore will trouble us

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For some reason, I don’t fully understand the incessant comparisons between Neutral Milk Hotel and The Decemberists. “They’re like Neutral Milk Hotel,” I could understand. But “they’re no Neutral Milk hotel,” I have a hard time with, since the latter band formed long after NMH stopped recording albums.

A criticism for sounding like the band that influenced you? This makes no sense. Is it a regional thing? That a band from the pacific northwest shouldn’t dare sound like a band from the south?

Ah… Is that it? Harrison Hudson! Another twitter calling-out of a band! Wait, add it up… Harrison is from the south… Hmmm… Do I have a theory in the works?

What about Death Cab for Cutie? These three groups are often pitted against each other as if in a favorite child competition. What’s with this? It makes me conjure Max Bemis…

Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance and vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs, you know nothing ABOUT art or sex that you couldn’t read in any trendy new york underground fashion magazine…Proto-typical non-conformist. You are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store gestapo. You adhere to a set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges-BULLSHIT-giving your thumbs up and thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art. Go analog baby, you’re so post-modern. You’re diving face forward into an antiquated past, it’s disgusting! It’s offensive! Don’t stick your nose up at me!

Oh beanie-wearing artsies… Can’t we all just get along? Let’s get to the album review and leave the competition behind. This Tuesday, The Decemberists’ fifth studio album is to be released. (And I will beat the horse for just a moment to point out that The Decemberists are still making music.) This album, The Hazards of Love, may be the album to catapult the band past the other indie/experimentals into first position in the hearts of the genre’s followers, although the reviewers at Entertainment Weekly seem to disagree – they assigned a D+. Then again, that particular reviewer doesn’t seem to appreciate rock operas in the first place.

A rock opera? Yes. That’s what The Hazards of Love is. And for the first time in a long time, I can conceptualize the story from beginning to end on such an effort. Track 10, “The Rake’s Song”, is probably one of the best illustrations of such. Look, I appreciate metaphor in song. But in a rock opera, you’ve got to be literal. And I love that about this song. And you can count on The Decemberists to utilize historical, outdated, or just plain British colloquialisms throughout their lyrics. Do you know what a rake is?


[The Decemberists – The Rakes Song ]

Another item to appreciate about The Decemberists is that this opera is being performed in its entirety at their live performances, such as at South by Southwest last week. It’s meant to be heard all at one sitting; should it not, then, be performed all at once? This album gets The Little One’s approval. It’s good. Sit back on some cushy tasseled pillows with a hookah and enjoy it. I especially appreciate the album art. It’s just as I would have imagined for this story.

Just one more item, to further confuse my pac-nw versus deep indie south theory, The Decemberists are slated to play Bonnaroo in June, but not Sasquatch! in May. They’ll be playing two phases of a tour over the summer, so browse their myspace or their website to follow them.

Tell me now, tell me this,
A forest’s son, a river’s daughter,
A willow on the willow wisp,
our ghosts will wander all of the water.

So let’s be married here today
these rushing waves to bear our witness,
And we will lie like river stones
rolling only where it takes us.

If they catch us, and dispatch us to our separate work camps…

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I’ll dream about you… I will not doubt you…

It’s possible you’ve heard of the band Say Anything by now. Their release “Alive With the Glory of Love” enjoyed some decent circulation on TV Shows and throughout video channels, such as FuseTV. “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too” was an instant teenage sensation since it repeated the thrillingly provocative “called her on the phone and she touched herself” line, not to mention an appearance by Henry Winkler in the video. If you missed these, maybe you heard “Baby Girl, I’m A Blur” which did receive national airplay.
Here is one of my favorite tracks from their first major abum, “…Is A Real Boy”. Check out “I Want To Know Your Plans”:

“You don’t think I’d say those words to you today?”

This blog is being written because I want you to meet the Say Anything from before “…Is A Real Boy” or “In Defense of the Genre”. You see, the band as a whole and their songs are very special to me and I am missing someone quite a bit right now. The day this blog goes live will hopefully be the day I get to see that person again. The way we had to go about discovering the band, tracking down early recordings, and what we went through to finally see them live makes it all the more important.

As I write this blog I am listening to some of these old tracks, and this is what I hear:
It’s always been for you
I sing every song for you
And every single day I’m falling down
I never want to say you’re mine “right now”
A tear rolls down your cheek, it hits the ground
I’m falling down

Max Bemis is the lead singer and songwriter of the band. He began penning tunes after a bad breakup in the year 2000, and fortunately for us, at least a hundred (and counting) articulately written songs about love, loss, society, school, the music scene, and hypocrisy followed.

Unfortunately, Bemis’ past decade has been full of ups and downs related to his mental disorder. At least one tour has been cancelled as a result of his paranoid delusions, quite possibly stemming from his decision to replace prescribed meds for Bipolar Disorder with illegal drugs. But a string of successful tours (currently on Warped Tour) and recordings have followed those harrowing times and Bemis and Co. are working on not only recording another Say Anything album, but several side projects with well-known industry pals as well.

It’s still difficult to find these earlier recordings on standard music purchase sites. But there is plenty to find on P2P sites. I suggest you check it out… Or purchase their new albums below.

On the EP “Menora/Majora” in 2002, Say Anything recorded one of my favorite tracks, and one that thankful fans were overjoyed to hear played live on the last tour. Please enjoy “A Walk Through Hell”:

Even earlier still, the band produced a self-released album called “Baseball”. Now tell me, whatever happened to the rock and roll in your eyes? Check out “Shameless”:

It didn’t kill me to be shameless. Is anyone getting a toothache from this post yet?

If you’re not sappy like I am and you enjoy witty observations of society, there is still plenty for you in the music of Say Anything. Throughout all their albums, they’ve been able to convey distaste and disillusionment, whether through the use of metaphor or an outright calling-out such as in the track “Admit It!” off “…Is A Real Boy”. But until then, the video that still gives me chills: Watch “Alive With The Glory of Love”:

All this time… It’s my favorite pastime, chasing after you.