Lyric sheet side 2I don’t want to spoil the whole story, and I don’t want you to miss out on the twists and turns. Outside of the album’s linear narrative, the next song has a story all of its own which I’ll talk about more when I cover Brand New’s ‘Your Favourite Weapon’ but track four talks about fights with best friends, getting drunk in bars, and blaming each other for what happened. Emotional torment ends the song with heartfelt vocals about needing to get out but wanting to stay in. The song goes on to talk about his lost love telling all her friends about how she has him on a short leash (or she’s got her gun to his head). The trade offs between Adam Lazzara and John Nolan are the best examples of ‘call-and-response’ vocals I can recall.Ĭontent of this song: “your lipstick, his collar, don’t bother angel, I know exactly what goes on” are the opening lines. The lines in this song are some of the very best ever put to paper. The lyrics “you got this silly way, of keeping me on the edge of my seat” Suggests he’s figuring this out for himself and he’s being played for a fool. Track two ‘bike scene’ sets the feeling our boy Adam was so invested in this love affair, he’d have done anything for her and she knows it. From opening track ‘You Know How I Do’ you get the feeling his girlfriend (I assume) has all but ended their relationship. The album revolves around the thoughts of our protagonist who we’ll call… Adam… We join him at a difficult time in his adolescence. I’ve owned various versions of this album for around 14 years now and listen to it regularly, but only yesterday (4th July 2017) when sitting on the beach with my old friend Pete, I discovered the real story and the real meaning behind the 10 (11 on vinyl) songs that were the soundtrack to an incredible time of my life. It’s a little more subtle and a little more honest. It’s hard to define really, I guess we call it emo? Not the emo you know from the days of My Chemical Romance and Funeral for a Friend and black fringes and teenagers cutting their wrists and crying in a dark room (as the newspapers at the time would have you believe) but a more sincere, less gimmicky (and less eyelinery) version. I think we need to start with the music… Front cover The memories it brings back? The passion and feeling in every word sang, screamed and wailed from first song to last? Or even how much more I find in this record a mere 14 years after I first heard it?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |