By Ryan Broderick
Max Bemis, frontman for the band Say Anything and poster child for the clinically insane, recently teamed up with Chris Conley from the band Saves The Day. The duo’s project, “Two Tongues” released their self-titled debut on February 3. The buzz on the CD had been good; unfortunately, the finished project isn’t as exciting as the Internet build up.
The album opens strong with songs like “Crawl” and “If I Could Make You Do Things.” They both showcase the influences of both singers’ other bands. The guitar parts are simple but powerful, and the singers meld together incredibly effectively. Aside from the opening two tracks, though, the album doesn’t offer much. The tracks “Come On,” “Tremors” and “Wowee Zowee” shine in the second half of the album, but 5 songs out of 13 does not a good album make.
The album’s main problem is the amount of filler. There’s a strong feel that both Bemis and Conley have much better songs they’re saving for their real bands. And sure, it’s fun to imagine two singers you respect having fun in a studio, but it doesn’t mean anyone should listen to it. The end of the album features a lot of strong dual vocal pop punk, but instead of combining their talent they just half assed their song writing abilities and met in the middle.
One of the most enjoyable songs on the record is the “Interlude,” sung by Sheri Dupree. Her voice is far stronger than Conley’s or Bemis’, which actually exposes the album’s biggest problem. Chris Conley’s voice sounds aged and tired. It’s shrill and sharp and mixed with the half-scream, half-sing thing Bemis does, the result is far from exciting.
The slow tempos and lagging power chords only add to the general attitude of “Yo, bro, let’s get high and half ass this record that people are really excited about” strewn all over the record.
It is definitely too harsh to say that the album is a failure, because the gems shine bright, the album as a whole wasn’t worth the time. Instead, though, of exploring the common ground between to Emo greats, they come off sounding masturbatory and self-indulgent. The album’s end result shifted from “Look what we can do” to “Look how great we are.” And of course, they really were as great as they acted, they wouldn’t have had to make an album detailing it in 13 songs.
Give “Two Tongues” a listen, see if anything on it does anything for you, take the songs you like, ignore the rest. From the sounds of it, they did the same thing.