By Ryan Broderick
“In Defense Of The Genre,” the new album from Say Anything, can only really be described as epic. With 27 tracks of music, the album is earth-shattering. The band’s sound is just as epic, too. The songs are pounding and as they pulse and charge they are completely exhausting to take in all at once. They’re even harder to critique.
The long-awaited follow up to “…Is A Real Boy” is massive. The two-disc album is one of the most expansive collections of music to come in a long time. Nothing sounds the same and yet every track is cohesive and uniform under the incredibly powerful and engrossing vocals of front man Max Bemis.
Over both discs, he snottily reflects, attacks and screams anthem after anthem. The songs are catchy and powerful and Bemis’ lyrics add an intimate and enveloping quality that is never drowned out. Instead of getting lost in the might of the band, he stands above like an angry rock general of a massive army.
One of the more interesting and entertaining things throughout the double album is the incredibly huge line up of guest stars. In other albums, the guest star is a song’s focal piece, but “In Defense Of The Genre” works differently. Most of the guest vocalists are mixed down so harmoniously with Bemis that one doesn’t even really know they’re there until looking up who’s in what song.
Say Anything’s name comes from an industry term that means a back-up band of “whoever,” and the band’s loose and casual use of guest vocalists embraces its “music first, ego second” approach to music.
Though every song is different from the last and there’s few redundant pieces in the entire collection, one does begin to notice that Say Anything easily could have taken 11 of the more incredible songs and just made one blockbuster CD. The gratuity is a little much in places and it’s really a challenge to a listener’s attention span.
Coming from “…Is A Real Boy,” Bemis and the rest of Say Anything have juggled and appraised their sound. One of their more interesting facets was unfortunately lost in the transition. On the last CD, they would sprinkle rousing gang-chants throughout songs, but this time around they’ve opted for a tighter focus on Bemis as a front man and traded gang vocals for group harmonies. It fits, but it takes a bit of the revelry away from the music. There’s less of a fun approachability. Of course, with two CDs, approachability probably isn’t their biggest concern.
As a band, the instrumentation is tight, sleek and uniform. The last album was marked by many disjointed and harmonizing guitar tracks, and listened like a rock ‘n’ roll collage. “In Defense Of The Genre” is more directed, more deliberate-and it’s much more straightforward.
Say Anything’s newest offering is more similar to the band’s early EPs than “…Is a Real Boy.” Lyrically, the subject matter and the vocals are more aggressive and brooding. There aren’t as many pop anthems, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the first single, “Baby Girl”-a jumpy techno song.
Ultimately, “In Defense Of The Genre” isn’t for casual listeners and it isn’t for radios. It is, however, a gigantic present to fans and whether or not the rest of the world follows seems to come second.
Say Anything return with new release “In Defense of the Genre,” a two-disc specialty album that incorporates guest artists to keep from redundancy. (sayanythingmusic.com)