The Top 12 Pop Punk Christmas Songs

Pop punk. It’s the sort of genre that elicits just as many groans as it does cheers. The one genre that elicits the closest reaction would have to be Christmas music. The two aren’t honestly that far removed, they both conjure up images of childhood and beloved memories of years gone past. So the fact that pop punk renditions of famous Christmas carols happen to exist isn’t really complex idea to grasp. With that said, here are 12 sugary sweet Christmas-themed pop punk songs, because god knows you need something light to get yourself through December 25th.

12: New Found Glory – Nothing For Christmas

Given the amount of cover songs on this list, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear NFG had covered some standard with their usual sense of proclivity for upbeat pop punk. Instead they choose to deliver a down-to-earth, mostly acoustic ballad. The main chorus of “Christmas is coming, so don’t buy me nothing/I got what I wanted, I got what I needed” stands in stark contrast to the general attitude of most pop punk songs, with many bands opting for bratty anthems about presents and materialism. But New Found Glory reinforce their ability to stand leagues above other pop punk bands by delivering a sincere and rather sweet song about the other, slightly less materialistic side of the holiday season.

11: Zebrahead – Deck The Halls (I Hate Christmas)

Zebrahead might cop a lot of shit for their less-than-normal mixture of pop punk and rap rock, but my god can they deliver a good Christmas song when needed. Ali Tatabaeee’s rapping might be in the same sort of ballpark as Vanilla Ice or  MCA from the Beastie Boys, but he delivers his lines with such earnest that you just have to love him for it. It’s such a pissed-off anti-Christmas diatribe that you can’t help but crack a smile at it. Plus it’s not often you see many straight up Christmas songs that just tear the holiday to shreds, like some sort of second-hand wrapping paper. Thank God Christmas only comes once a year, am I right?

10: Less Than Jake – I’m Getting Nuttin’ For Christmas

Clocking in at just under two minutes, Less Than Jake do a great job of summing up the darker side of Christmas. A bratty little slice of punk that’s certain to bring a smile on your face come December 25th. An anthem for snotty little kids everywhere. Less Than Jake clearly realise not every kid gave a shit about Christmas as a kid, and that all the misbehaving kids in the world had something coming to them at the end of every year, no doubt. It’s also notable for being one of the few Less Than Jake songs to lack a horn section, since apparently not even Father Christmas can stomach ska punk.

9: Relient K – Sleigh Ride

Matt Thiessen’s quavering vocals work well with the band’s general sense of uneasiness and insecurity. Relient K give this classic quite the modern makeover, complete with the typical youthful earnest and cutesy trappings their covers often contain. Given Relient K’s penchant for leaning towards borderline Christian Rock at times, you’d think they’d have chosen a slightly less secular to cover. Nevertheless, their rendition of this holiday standard is sure to melt the heart’s of even the most cynical of Scrooges. Considering my Christmases usually consist of trying to outrun 30° heat for a good 24 hours, this song does a good job of making me picture a Wintery fairy land in my backyard, without a doubt.

8: All Time Low – Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass

All Time Low provide us with a delightfully bitter Christmas tune, filled with enough swagger and charm to appease any holiday-hating Grinch. The line “Last year’s Summer romance/is this year’s Winter blues” might seem a tinge sad, but the sheer exuberance on display here is nothing to sneeze at. Alex Gaskarth has always found a way to All Time Low have never taken themselves particularly seriously, and this song is no exception. The music video is absolutely hysterical as well, featuring a puppet by the name of Stuart slowly going insane and fantasizing over his co-worker amidst the backdrop of a Christmas party, proving that someone in All Time Low certainly has a wicked sense of humour.

7: Panic! At The Disco – White Christmas

Panic! At The Disco are probably the last band you’d ever picture covering this timeless tune, but lo and behold they did it anyway. The final result is surprisingly better than expectedThe scat singing and layered vocals lend the song a Wintery atmosphere. Brendon Urie croons and modulates his way through this Christmas classic with enough vigour to make Bing Crosby green with envy. The interpolation of Jingle Bells at the end is also quite a stroke of genius.

6: Fucked Up – Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Canadian punks Fucked Up might seem like poe-faced critical darlings, but they know how to let their hair down when they feel like it. While it might be a stretch to call them “pop punk”, their take on this infamous 80’s tune is worthy of the finest pop punk accolades. Roping in a handful of their friends such as Andrew W.K, Tegan and Sara and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, these punks tackle Band Aid’s holiday classic Do They Know It’s Christmas? with all the vigour of your drunken uncle after he’s had far too much eggnog and whiskey. The whole band just sounds like they’re having a ton of fun here and the chorus at the end is nothing short of adorable. Plus just like the original, all the proceeds went to charity so you know they were doing something right.

5: Jimmy Eat World – Last Christmas

Jimmy Eat World are somewhat famous for their cover songs, and their rendition of Wham!’s 80’s Christmas hit knocks the original out of the ballpark. Jimmy Eat World’s rendition is slightly more upbeat and more danceable than Wham!’s original, with a four-to-the-floor dance beat that works beautifully. Jim Adkins vocals sound far more hopeful than George Michael’s, lending the song a sense of closure and finality that the original lacks. Similarly, the gentle acoustic guitars lend the song a rather airy and uplifting aura that help the song much less dated than the original. It’s sure to instantly conjures memories of Christmases past, while also making you feel slightly emotional.

4: Brand New – Oh Holy Night

Brand New are many things. Intense, heavy, possibly a little bit overrated, but also quite honest with their musc. Listening to their rendition of Oh Holy Night is quite possibly as honest as they can get with their music. There’s seriously not a lot to say about this one. It’s Brand New covering an incredibly famous Christmas carol with all the sincerity and integrity you’d expect from them. It’s not really something to play while your uncle is getting drunk on eggnog, but rather the sort of song you play after all the festivities are done and you’re possibly getting ready for a good night’s sleep. And it’s a damn good rendition as well, so give Jesse Lacey a bit of credit for this one. The man certainly knows how to cover a Christmas carol, when he’s not whining over girls or the state of humanity.

3: Fall Out Boy – Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

 Yule Shoot Your Eye Out is a deliciously venomous take on the usual Christmas tale, with singer Patrick Stump downright livid at a former girlfriend who just happens to contact him at Christmastime. This song is basically the anti-Last Christmas, it’s as vicious as a Christmas song can possibly get. TAside from being entirely acoustic, it’s sung in the softest tone that you could almost mistake it for being sweet if you didn’t pay attention to the lyrics. Fall Out Boy have built their career on songs about jilted exes and lost loves, so the fact that they managed to craft a Christmas-themed song around this idea is no surprise whatsoever. Still you’ve gotta hand it to the boys, they do it with such style and grace that you can’t help but love ‘em anyway for it

2: My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You

I wrote a good three paragraphs last year about how much I can’t stand Mariah Carey’s rendition of this stinker. For the longest time I just assumed All I Want For Christmas Is You was one of those unsalvageable Christmas songs. But suddenly, a revelation occurred. The song itself wasn’t bad, just the delivery. All I Want For Christmas doesn’t need to be delivered in the form of a sappy, R&B song. It needs a band like My Chemical Romance to inject it with enough yearing teen angst and punk-edge to The band’s choppy guitar riffs, Shrieking vocals and crashing cymbals certainly inject the song with the kind of energy it most desperately needed. Gerard Way goes from 0 to 100 in the span of a good 30 seconds, following up a sweet piano intro with the Frank Iero’s chugging rhythm section.

1: Blink-182 – I Won’t Be Home For Christmas

Would it really be a pop punk list without Blink-182? Probably not. The line“It’s Christmas time again/It’s time to be nice to the people you can’t stand all year” sums up most people’s feelings regarding Christmas quite succinctly, especially when all you want to do is find a corner to sit down in while your relatives get drunk and reminisce about mundane and relatively boring events. In true Christmas fashion, the addition of sleigh bells and soaring choruses go quite well with Blink-182’s usual upbeat style. The fact that it manages to sound miserable, world-weary, immature and downright funny all in the span of three and a half minutes is why I think it’s the greatest pop punk Christmas song of all time. Plus come on, how many other Christmas songs can you name that have a breakdown in them

 

Pop Punk Predictions: The End Of An Era

The past half-decade has been quite the tumultuous one for alternative music. Pop punk, previously thought of as a throwaway genre for pre-adolescents has been given a new life in today’s alternative landscape. Unfortunately, it seems as if the genre’s time in the limelight might be drawing to a close, or at the very least shifting significantly. Between State Champs touring with 5 Seconds Of Summer and Neck Deep cracking the UK Top 10, 2015 was most definitely an amazing year for pop punk. However, the aforementioned bands have a far more carefree, upbeat sound than the artists which have dominated pop punk over the past few years. As 2016 dawns on us, I felt it necessary to open a dialogue on the future for these bands, and see if they can make a career for themselves after the tr00nami finally crests. Let’s start off with one of the higher profile bands in the scene…..

The Wonder Years

With the release of their latest album No Closer To Heaven, it seems as if The Wonder Years are finally ready to ditch the pizza, crewnecks and khakis of yesteryear and move into the fabled realm of “real music”. Just one glance at any of the songs on the album reveals Soupy has taken his penchant for songs about old white people in the 1940’s to the extreme. There’s nary a single major chord or d-beat to be found anywhere within the album. The Wonder Years now resemble the kind of run-of-the-mill alternative rock band that would play to twenty-something beardos and get a positive write-up in Brooklyn Vegan than your average pop punk outfit. It almost makes you forget these were the same guys who wrote a song about the Kool-Aid man beating up Cap’n Crunch at one point.

The Story So Far

It’s honestly hard to tell what The Story So Far will do in these dire times. They seem to have pushed their stangry, sadboi-baiting sound to the nth degree so there’s really nowhere else for them to go at this point. They could simply go back to their Under Soil & Dirt sound and ride the tr00 wave til it’s very death. If they followed their former pupils Neck Deep and joined the neo-mallpunk wave, that would presumably be the musical equivalent of throwing in the towel (not to mention it would basically alienate over 80% of their fan base). I believe TSSF should follow Trophy Eyes example and essentially become a hardcore band disguised as a pop punk outfit, that way they can retain their credibility amongst the 16-year old Tumblr users while also evolving their sound in the process. Basically the musical equivalent of having your cake and eating it too.

Man Overboard

Sadly, it seems as if Man Overboard’s time in the sunlight has come to a swift closure. Their last album was a confusing, boring mess that sounded way too much like Weezer-circa 1994 than any pop punk band nowadays. Man Overboard’s attempt to shake off the stigma of being a pop punk band in 2015 evidently backfired significantly, with Heavy Love charting far lower than their last album on Billboard. Once their contract with Rise Records expires, I could probably see them riding their career out for the next few years on some smaller label before the pressure of adulthood finally overwhelms their desire to play for crowds of 300 pizza-addicted teenagers night after night. For the band often credited with kickstarting the modern tr00 movement, it’s quite a shame to see Man Overboard’s career turn out this way. Expect to see various Defend Pop Punk shirts lining the discount racks of various thrift stores for the remainder of the decade.

Transit

Not only is the tr00 pop punk era drawing to a close, but it seems the fabled “emo revival” music-journalists have been creaming themselves over might be on its last legs as well. For Boston band Transit, this presents a problem. Despite various NFL-related airplay, the response to their last album was lukewarm at best. Given their propensity for walking the lines between both genres, the band have found themselves at a crossroads in their career. They could simply follow The Wonder Years example and go full Pitchfork-baiting indie rock. However, given the indie community’s general dislike for former pop punk/emo bands passing themselves off as credible artists, time will tell whether Transit can weather the fallout of the cresting wave of tr00ness.

Title Fight

Has their ever been a band with a worse case of multiple personality disorder than Title Fight? One minute they’re chumming it up with Backtrack and Rotting Out on America’s Hardcore, next minute they’re ripping Hum and trying to pass themselves off as a “shoegaze” outfit. Despite Hyperview sounding like something 4AD Records would’ve shat out in the early 90’s, things seem to be looking up for Title Fight. Along with former EZ-deniers Citizen and Will Yip butt buddies Turnover, Title Fight seem to be leading the charge for “former soft grunge bands trying to build a life after pop punk”. Give them credit, at least they know D-beats and songs about ex-girlfriends don’t exactly have a long shelf-life. Better to move with the times and risk getting left in the dust, week-old pizza slice in hand with a tattered flannel shirt adorning your back. Expect to see them at the Grammys accepting an award from Dave Grohl in the near-future.

Real Friends

I feel as if Real Friends will be the band most affected in the aftermath of the tr00nami. Most of these other bands had roots in less meaningful, less stangry forms of music (easycore for The Wonder Years, hardcore for Title Fight, etc.) However Real Friends are entirely a product of the 2010’s pop punk landscape, and I feel as if they will suffer the heaviest once the market falls through on the tr00 pop punk enterprise. Leaving aside the fact that their debut album was mediocre at best and didn’t hold a candle to their EP’s, there’s only so far you can go with sleepy eyes, bony knees and d-beats. Their Chicagoan contemporaries Knuckle Puck seem to do Real Friends better than Real Friends themselves can, while Aussie upstarts Trophy Eyes basically took Real Friends template of “pissed-off pop punk about ex-girlfriends” and pushed it to its limit. I honestly can’t see Real Friends with anywhere else to go. Once their fanbase grows up, it will definitely be hard for them to try and connect with the next generation of pop punk youth (which seems to be skewing in a far more lighthearted direction if Neck Deep’s latest album is anything to go by.) In their case, I believe Fall Out Boy said it best: “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago”…

Retrospective: American Football – American Football (1999)

American Football – American Football

Hindsight is a funny thing. You can listen to a band years after their inception, think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and then find out that they were incredibly unsuccessful, made next to no money while they were together, and broke up soon after releasing their debut. That’s exactly what happened to Chicago-based group American Football, whose sole 1999 album has earnt the band the type of mystique and intrigue generally reserved for enigmatic acts such as Big Star or Rodriguez in terms of underappreciated artists. American Football were an emo group hailing from Urbana, Illinois in the late 90’s, who only ever released one album on then little-known Polyvinyl Records before quietly disbanding. Now you’d think this would be the end of their story right? Wrong. This one album would go on to become sort of a holy grail for emo in the 21st century, being cited by countless artists as a major influence, and re-assessing American Football’s cultural importance in the development of alterntive music. The bands fondness for gentle, twinkling guitars, Mike Kinsella’s soft spoken confessional lyrics would become something of a blueprint for indie rock and emo in the year’s after the albums initial release.

American Football first came into being in the middle of 1997, formed out of the dissolution of multiple bands. Vocalist Mike Kinsella had recorded previous tenures in influential 90’s emo outfits such as Cap’n Jazz and Joan Of Arc, and was currently a vocalist for a group named The One Up Downstairs. Internall issues caused The One Up Downstairs to call it a day, so Kinsella and drummer Steve Lamos went on to form American Football. The group signed with independent  Champaign, Illinois-based record label Polyvinyl (years before they would become the home of indie powerhouses like Of Montreal or Japandroids), and released a 3-track EP. Roughly a year later, the group unleashed their self-titled album onto the world at large.

In the time period in which American Football released this beautiful slice of midwestern emo meets twinkly math rock, emo had yet to become a four letter word, most bands swore by 3-chords and the truth and The Get Up Kids were the closest thing to a “mainstream” group that the genre could lay claim to. The album’s varying time signatures and soft, bittersweet vocals mixed with twinkly guitars and overly confessional lyrics were something of an oddity. The sound of American Football was in huge contrast to other bands in the genre. The band lacked the atmospheric intensity of Sunny Day Real Estate or Mineral; while their slow pace and gentle instrumentation set them apart from their more punk influenced peers such as The Promise Ring or Braid.

Midsummer melancholy is quite possibly the best way to describe American Football’s overall theme and style. Much like the lone house depicted in the cover art, the album evokes images of suburban angst and emptiness.Mike Kinsellas’ lyrics focus on the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood and the collapsing of relationships, delivered with the kind of stony-faced deadpan vigour that would make Ben Gibbard blush with embarrassment. But the lyrics aren’t what sets American Football from its fellow graduates in the emo class of ’99. The main draw with American Football is the airtight instrumentation of Kinsella and co., and the downright brilliance of what these guys are able to accomplish within 40 minutes. Forget 10 minute guitar solos, all American Football need are some switching up time signatures and floating guitar instrumentation and you’re good to go.

Opening track “Never Meant” is the pristine centrepiece of the album. That’s not to say that the rest of the album doesn’t exactly hold a candle, but it does pale in comparison to the masterpiece of  “Never Meant”. “The Summer Ends” slows down the pace by a notch or two, while Kinsella’s soft croon intertwines with the blunt trumpeting of Steve Lamos, creating a breezy and relaxed mood that transitions well from the angst of the previous track. “Honestly” begins as a simple track, with Kinsella’s ringing guitar scales going up and down the place, until the time signature changes at 1:50 and hits like a freight train. The track then continues on in this vain while distorted guitar chords and Vamos’s horn section swirls around in a dreamlike state.

“Stay Home” clocks at just over 8 minutes, and yet it feels far shorter than its runtime suggests. Mike Kinsella’s distant and introverted lyrics on the track sound like teenage mantras for the unloved. “Don’t leave home again/If empathy takes energy/’cause everyone feels just like you” could easily have been ripped from the page of any brokenhearted 16 year old, but in the context of American Football, it sounds like the most meaningful statement on earth. Due to the track’s long and repetitive structure, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Eat World’s “Goodbye Sky Harbor” from Clarity, which was released a mere 7 months prior to American Football. In many ways, you could consider American Football the yin to Clarity’s yang, since while Jimmy Eat World sung about teenage heartache and hometown problems with the heart-on-the-sleeve angst and fiery determination of adolescent males, American Football focuses on the breakup and dissolving of meaningful relationships with an emotionally distant sense of regret, and a sense of maturity hitherto unseen in emo music. Before you know it, “The One With The Wurlitzer” hits and gives the album a serene send-off. Despite the title sounding like a rejected Friends episode, it’s easily the most laid-back and calmest sounding song on the album.

American Football’s impact on the world of alternative music was not an instantaneous one. The band broke up months after the release of the album, presumably to be written off as another footnote in music history. As the years progressed into the 2000’s, emo came to be associated with signifiers such as Hot Topic and teenagers with dyed hair and too much eyeliner. The emo period in the mid-2000’s was comparable to the Sunset Strip’s bastardisation of heavy metal in the 80’s, in terms of how far removed from its origins it had become. It’s quite a chilling thought to realise that somehow it’s possible to formulate a connection between American Football and Blood On The Dance Floor, but nevertheless, the genre prevailed. Then a funny thing happened at the end of the decade. Bands begun reaching back into the 1990’s and taking inspiration from the emo forebearers of the decade. And wouldn’t you know it, American Football happened to be one of the frontrunner in terms of bands getting long-overdue acknowledgement.

The impact American Football’s lone studio album had on the development of emo a decade after its inception could be comparable to The Velvet Underground’s influence on punk rock and alternative music in the late 70’s. Multiple high profile bands in the so called “Emo Revival”, from Dads to Foxing to The Hotelier to Tigers Jaw to even The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die have acknowledge the mopey midwesterners as an influence. Polyvinyl Records would go on to become an indie powerhouse in the 21st century, adding high-profile acts such as Of Montreal, Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, The Rentals, STRFKR and Alvvays to their roster. Mike Kinsella would briefly reunite with his brother Tim and fellow ex-Cap’n Jazz members in the experimental outfit Owls, before embarking on a solo career under the moniker Owen. In March of 2014, Polyvinyl reissued American Football with a bonus disc containing live performances of several of the songs. A month later, Polyvinyl registered the domain name “americanfootballmusic.com”, which contained a countdown lasting until the 21st of April. Once the countdown ended, it was announced that American Football would reunite and tour the United States in honor of the album’s 15th anniversary.

While American Football still remains a highly enjoyable album, quite possibly one of the best albums of 1999 in my opinion (yes, it’s up there with Ágætis byrjun and Emergency & I in terms of alternative albums from that year), it’s funny to think about how the different emo would have turned out had the band never released this. Would emo have still gone mainstream and end up becoming one of the most polarising genres of the 2000’s? What would all those revival bands be channeling as opposed to American Football? Would we have had a bunch of Get Up Kids and Saves The Day revival bands instead? Would twinkly guitars have ever become a thing outside of cheesy 80’s soft rock ballads? Or am I simply overthinking what is a relatively enjoyable and uplifting emo album that remains a stone-cold classic of the genre to this very day and will presumably remain so? Whatever the case, if you haven’t heard this album yet in all its glory, go out and hear it right now. You will absolutely not regret it. Trust me.

9/10

Retrospective: The Get Up Kids – Something To Write Home About (1999)

The Get Up Kids – Something To Write Home About

If there one band in particular you could thank for the introduction of the word “emo” into the popular consciousness, it’d be The Get Up Kids. Whenever people debate the origins of the word, the answer always ranges from Rites Of Spring in the mid-80’s to Sunny Day Real Estate in the early 90’s. But the group that arguably paved the way for emo’s ascent into the mainstream and thereby becoming alternative music’s whipping boy throughout the 2000’s, would undoubtedly be The Get Up Kids. They were the first band to take the sound of emo, and mix it with a clean and commercial-friendly radio-oriented sound. The difference is, they did it when it was a novel thing to do, and they did it with such finesse that you couldn’t help but be impressed. In that respect, their 1999 sophmore album Something To Write Home About can be considered an unlikely watershed moment for the 90’s emo scene, and arguably for the genre as a whole.

Bands such as The Promise Ring or Jawbreaker had made attempts at injecting the rawness of emo with a pop sensibility, but none of them did it quite as effortlessly as The Get Up Kids did. Unlike later bands who would take emo into the stratospheric realm of the pop charts (ala Fall Out Boy or Hawthorne Heights), The Get Up Kids chose to remain staunchly independent in their approach and not bow down to commercial pressure. This was reflected in their signing with pop punk Vagrant, whose roster would go on to include fellow emo stalwarts such as Saves The Day, Alkaline Trio and Dashboard Confessional. Prior to this, The Get Up Kids had released  their debut album, Four Minute Mile along with a handful of EP’s on the Toledo, Ohio based Doghouse Records. Four Minute Mile was a scrappy, post-hardcore influenced record, which bore little resemblance to the tightly-knit sound The Get Up Kids would later adopt on Something To Write Home About. After an unfruitful stint with Mojo Records, the group hooked up with producers Chad Blinman & Alex Brahl and over the Summer of 1999, recorded Something To Write Home About at the Mad Hatter Studios in Silverlake, California.

Opening track “Holiday”, with it’s ascending guitar riffs and Matt Pryor’s howling vocals convey everything The Get Up Kids set out to accomplish. It opens the album off like a shotgun blast, and sets the tone for the next 45 minutes with ease. “Action and Action” see’s The Get Up Kids wearing their hearts on their sleeves, as keyboardist James Dewees (of Reggie & The Full Effect/My Chemical Romance fame) plays a counterpoint synth line, that contrasts nicely with Matt Pryor’s lyrics. “Overexposure is the key, and any focus on me/is appreciated, as it should be” sounds like something you’d read in a 13 year old girls diary entry, but it’s delivered with such conviction that it sidesteps the cheesiness factor. Lead single “Ten Minutes” is easily the most pop punk friendly track on here, with a beautifully familiar chord progression and an upbeat melody that works against the song’s tone. On “Ten Minutes”, you can hear the impact The Get Up Kids had on later pop punk and emo bands, with bands such as The Wonder Years and Into It. Over It no doubt drawing influence from the Kansas City five-piece.

James Dewees keyboards were one of the elements that really made The Get Up Kids stand out amongst their emo peers at the time. Similar to how Weezer had brought back new wave-esque keyboards in alternative rock on The Blue Album five years earlier, James’s synth-riffs and quirky style of playing would prove to be an influence on later emo and power pop groups, such as The Anniversary or Motion City Soundtrack. Production wise, Something To Write Home About was leagues ahead of anything else The Get Up Kids had ever recorded, with the lo-fi textures of Four Minute Mile replaced with a crisp, sharp sound that was easy on the ears, yet still allowed The Get Up Kids fiery sound to shine through. “Long Goodnight” is the track which would resonate most with the emo audiences of 2014, with its twinkly guitar riff echoing fellow midwestern miserablists  American Football, and would prove a hit with Tumblr-kids everywhere were it released today. Closing track “I’ll Catch You” is a similarly mellow affair, with sombre piano chords paired with James’s soft synth pads. “Can you sleep as the sound hits your ears, one at a time?” asks Matt, as a soft guitar riff begins to seep in through the cracks in the song. Eventually, the drums and bass guitar begin to follow and eventually the track bursts into a beautifully orchestrated crescendo, that recalls Jimmy Eat World’s “Goodbye Sky Harbor” off their 1999 album Clarity. It’s the perfect way to end an album of such overwrought emotions and concentrated teenage angst.

Something To Write Home About only reached as high as #31 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart upon release, but it was enough of a financial success to net The Get Up Kids supporting slots for tours with both Green Day and Weezer. Upon release, the band embarked on 3 years of solid touring, and it wasn’t until 2002 that the band would record a proper follow-up to Something To Write Home About. The Get Up Kids never really equaled the same mix of heart on the sleeve angst with pop punk agression again. 2002’s On A Wire was a mellow, alternative rock sounding affair and 2004’s Guilt Show was essentially a poor-man’s version of Green Album-era Weezer. In retrospect, we can thank Something To Write Home About for opening up the floodgates for emo’s mainstream takeover in the early 2000’s, with bands such as Fall Out Boy or Taking Back Sunday either drawing from or downright proclaiming The Get Up Kids as a direct influence on them. However, the band themselves were quite dismissive of their apparent legacy. In a 2009 interview with Drowned In Sound, guitarist Jim Suptic claimed “The punk scene we came out of and the punk scene now are completely different. It’s like glam rock now…..It was just a sea of neon shirts to us. If this is the world we helped create, then I apologise”.

Nevertheless, you can’t deny The Get Up Kids status as pioneers in modern emo. On Something To Write Home About, they basically created the blueprint for every mid-2000’s emo band, until that formula was run into the ground by bland Fueled By Ramen and Drive-Thru Records bands. If you had to pinpoint the moment where emo transitioned from an underground fad into a full-on pop phenomenon, it’d easily be the release of Something To Write Home About. It still holds up today, and proves its worth as a stone-cold classic of the genre.

9.5/10

The Case for Mall-Emo

In the past two years, websites such as Alternative Press and Noisey have been creaming their collective pants over a musical wave known as the “emo revival”. What the hell is the emo revival? Well, let me give you an explanation. Once upon a time, in the mid-80’s, a bunch of punk bands in Washington D.C. decided they were very very sad. So they formed a couple of bands in the summer of ’85 who wrote middle-of-the-road 3-chord hardcore songs and called themselves “emo”. Unfortunately, nobody cared, because it was still the 80’s and people were too busy losing their shit to Motley Crüe at this point. Until 1994 that is, when the Seattle band Sunny Day Real Estate released their debut album “Diary”, which is credited as being the focal point for modern emo. Sunny Day Real Estate had a soft, melodic alt-rock sensibility and combined that with lyrics that could’ve been torn from your average 13-year olds LiveJournal account, and people enjoyed it. And then throughout the 90’s, bands popped up like mad, evolving the template from Sunny Day Real Estate’s slow and twinkly songs into something else. Something sinister.

Once the new millennium rolled around, a new crop of bands had emerged to fly the flag for emo. The difference was, these bands had a much more pop-punk influenced sound, that displayed no ties to either the 80’s D.C. bands or the 90’s Sunny Day knockoffs. Bands such as My Chemical Romance or Hawthorne Heights were now being played on MTV, enraging emo purists to the nth degree, with many denouncing these new bands and christening them “mall-emo”. Emo had come to be less of a sound and more of a fashion statement. Similarly, the bands were absolutely reviled by critics, with many writing them off as simply angsty, immature fodder for teenagers with bad haircuts and skinny jeans. Unless you were either Death Cab For Cutie or Brand New, there wasn’t much chance of you making Rolling Stone or Pitchfork’s year-end list. After the public began to tire of this new breed of emo, many of the bands either broke-up (My Chemical Romance) changed their sound (Fall Out Boy, Paramore) or simply just said fuck it and did whatever the hell they wanted to (Panic! At The Disco, anyone?)

However in the past decade, the once-stagnant late-90’s style of melodic emo has begun to make something of a comeback. Bands such as A Great Big Pile Of Leaves or Foxing have been making huge waves in alternative and indie rock circles in the past 2 years. Record labels such as Polyvinyl (who released American Footballs seminal self-titled album) and the Boston based Topshelf (who are pretty much the emo revival equivalent to Strictly Rhythm when it comes to quality releases) These bands owe their sound more to the midwestern twinkly emo forefathers American Football or the Texas based meek-poets Mineral, rather than say, Fall Out Boy. But does all this mean we should discount mall-emo? Write it off as simply an embarrassing footnote in the history of popular music, akin to hair metal or disco? I don’t think so.

I was all of 8 years old when My Chemical Romance released their 2004 album “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge”, and about 10 when they put out “The Black Parade” in 2006, which propelled them into the upper echelons of the Billboard charts. My cousin was hugely into My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, I remember her picking me up from school one day and blasting “Three Cheers” in the car, presumably in an attempt to indoctrinate me into a cult of black-eyeliner wearing teenagers with a penchant for wrist-slitting. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was probably the tipping point that sent me on the road down into alternative music heaven, and helping influence my teenage tastes for years to come (At this point, I thought Green Day and The Offspring were the pinnacle of music).

Other than some absolutely tragic fashion choices, I didn’t see anything wrong with the music at the time. I think my relative innocence must have just isolated the poppy-melody of “Teenagers”, helping to hide the cringeworthy and bitter chorus that followed. Similarly, when Fall Out Boy’s “Thnks Fr The Mmrs” dropped in 2007 and became a loveable radio-rock staple, I didn’t think there was anything terrible about it. Patrick Stump’s shouty chorus of “He! Tastes like you only SWEETEEEEEEEEER!” was an inescapable earworm that still brings a smile to my face. As I got older and transitioned into high school, I started to gravitate more towards bands like Brand New or Paramore, before eventually my tastes changed more towards indie rock and metal. But I’ve never forgotten  But “tr00” emo fans can be funny people, and the single whiff of commercial success can sour a band’s reputation in the eyes of most people.

I’m not slating the emo revival in any way. I think bands such as Foxing and The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die are absolutely fantastic and a great example of how to evolve emo into the 21st century, and do it with aplomb. However, I think people are looking back at the mid-2000’s emo scene with rather jade coloured glasses. Yes, Bush was still president and those swoopy fringes still look just as awful in 2014 as they do in 2004, but aren’t we all being a bit too pessimistic here? You might not admit to it, but you probably danced around to Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” at some point in the early 2000’s. You might’ve got a bit weepy eyed when Dashboard Confessional played the unplugged version of “Hands Down” live on The Late Show. Hell, you probably even attended Warped Tour once or twice. My point is, while mall-emo is seen as a cringeworthy movement, for a lot of people it was an outlet. I’ve known people who’ve formed friendships and relationships, and have even created some good memories over emo. You might laugh at those cheesy MySpace layouts with too many Blingee emoticons and automatic music, but are they any different to a Tumblr page with reblogged images of Snowing lyrics?  The mall-emo era may have soured the genres reputation in the eyes of some, but to others it was a pretty sweet ride. So long and goodnight, thanks for the memories (even though they weren’t so great).

Retrospective: Fall Out Boy – Take This To Your Grave (2003)

Fall Out Boy – Take This To Your Grave

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Fall Out Boy. I’m one of those people who believe that their early albums are fantastic, with Take This To Your Grave being some damn good pop punk and From Under The Cork Tree a masterclass in mainstream emo-pop. They’ve fallen off a bit in recent years (Save Rock And Roll was pretty embarrassing, you’ve gotta admit), but their older material is incredibly good. Today I thought I’d review their first proper album Take This To Your Grave

It’s astonishing how assured of themselves they sound on this album. Take This To Your Grave sounds much slicker than any pop punk debut has the right to be. Think  The Get Up Kids with less synthesizers or Taking Back Sunday with more of a pop sheen and you’ve got Fall Out Boy’s sound down pat. Compared to most other bands on Fueled By Ramen at this point, you could tell these guys weren’t gonna spend their lives kicking around the emo-pop ghetto. Speaking of which, their background was slightly different from the majority of floppy fringed midwestern kids topping TRL at this point. I was surprised to learn that Pete Wentz played in several hardcore punk and metalcore bands throughout Chicago, prior to starting Fall Out Boy as an “escapist side project” in his own words. Patrick Stump was even a drummer for a local grindcore (!) band before joining Pete on their quest for pop stardom and Warped Tour success.

And at this point in their career, they were sure as hell willing to experiment more than most other Pop Punk groups. The screamo-esque background vocals in “Saturday” and “Calm Before The Storm” for instance, or the looping guitar feedback in the end of “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago” are probably about as far as they got, but that’s probably more than you can say for than the glut of Saves The Day wannabes Drive-Thru Records and Fueled By Ramen were signing at the time. “Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over” sounds like it could be a Lifetime song, for christ’s sake (I’ve always got fond memories of hearing that song in Burnout 3). When Patrick cries out “As when you wrap your car around a tree, your makeup looks so great next to his teeth” in “Tell That Mick He Just Made My List Of Things To Do Today”, it sounds like a typical emo cliche. But it’s delivered with such confidence and vigour that you can’t help but be captivated by it. “Dead On Arrival” has one of the cheesiest choruses ever. “This is side one, flip me over, I know I’m not you’re favourite record” “So I’m writing you a chorus,” and here is your verse”. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to hear on a Sum 41 album, but the guitar riffs are so loud and entrancing, that you fail to notice it amongst all the clatter.

The production on Take This To Your Grave was sure to aggravate all the “tru punx” from the very beginning. If people thought Blink-182 sounded too pop-oriented, wait until you hear the mixing on this album. It’s the kind of thing that ensured Fall Out Boy would rocket up the Billboard charts in the future, and ensure all the sex drugs and rock and roll their future held. Not surprising at all once you find out they recorded it at Butch Vig’s Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, the same place Nirvana recorded Nevermind at. Fall Out Boy were only following in the footsteps of prior bands who’d crossed over from underground success to global stardom.

If Fall Out Boy had broken up shortly after the release of this album, Take This To Your Grave would be viewed in a much different light. Perhaps as a document of the tipping point in the pop punk/emo canon, when the dam was just about to break and hordes of long fringed boys in black eyeliner and white belts were poised to take over the mainstream. Instead, they ended up becoming the poster boys for the nascent Hot Topic emo scene of the mid-2000’s, and the favourite band of every angsty, problematic, wrist-slitting teenage girl with a MySpace account (Also, they brought Panic! At The Disco into this world, so I can never forgive them for that) But when all is said and done, we can’t fault them for this killer debut album. If you’re ever feeling angsty and want some mood music to vibe with, give this classic a spin. You won’t regret it, honest. Just try not to put any guyliner on your face while doing it.

7.5/10