Day 3 - "Lights Out" by Letter Kills

Day 3 - "Lights Out" by Letter Kills

While most of my friends will recognize this very distinct voice, you may not recognize this band. Singer Matt Shelton is now part of one of my favorite bands, The Wedding. But before he took over vocals for the latest incarnation of one of Christian rock's most promising acts, he was signed to Island Records with Southern California's Letter Kills.

"Island Records?" you ask. Why yes, the same label that brought you U2, Bob Marley, Mott the Hoople (one of my personal faves), Nick Drake, Bad Company, and even the Christian alternative pioneers, The 77's, brought us one album from this emo/punk powerhouse.

While my previous posts have delved into some pretty dark depths (I have a penchant for alliteration), emo certainly has beams of light shining up through the mire of lovesick forlorn troubadours.

Letter Kills takes their name from II Cor. 3:

"Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Listening to Matt sing, one can't help but notice his zest for life. Having promoted a few shows where The Wedding has taken the stage, I've been grateful that the room I delivered had ample ceiling clearance and a relatively large stage because Matt uses every inch of it. Between swinging the mic on his cord like David hurling his sling through the air at Goliath, or jumping off speaker stacks like a real world Spiderman, Matt blesses the concertgoer with his laser-like focus on the emotion of joy. And could anyone be having more fun singing a song? If Scatman Crothers and Cab Calloway were to somehow reincarnate as punk singers, they would sit at the feet of Matthew Shelton to hone their chops. Too often Christians live their life in a dour, puritanical malaise that certainly doesn't tell anyone that Christ came to give us life and that more abundantly. Both onstage and off, Matt seems to get that.


So as for the song itself, I dig the message of hope and posture towards worship. A few favorite lyrics:

"A life that speaks of a never-ending truth,
And the words we say will remain in you.
As long as we can sing, we'll sing for you!"

"Don't wait for tomorrow, raise your voice tonight!
This hate is burning so let's watch it die!
'cause when it falls,
our voice will ring so loud!
Don't wait for tomorrow, raise your voice tonight!"

I'm a sucker for bands giving a mic to each member. I like collective heys, uhs, and yeahs. It's where rock n' roll meets boot camp marching cadence chants. This song has that in spades. Check out Letter Kills if you haven't heard them before. And go check out The Wedding. They have a relatively new EP out that rocks.

Until next time...

Day 2 - "How's It Going to Be?" by Third Eye Blind

"How's It Going To Be?" by Third Eye Blind

Day two came out a couple of months late. I've been busy and I'm a terrible procrastinator. On to the blog:

I know what all you hip young gunslingers are thinking (besides, "This guy has watched High Fidelity one too many times). Third Eye Blind is not emo! Alright, technically you are correct. But ask All Time Low, Boys Like Girls, or any number of the emo bands that hit a stage these days who their heroes are. Most of them are going to drop in their list of The Pixies, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Jawbreaker the 3eb.

I gotta be honest, Third Eye Blind has never been one of my favorite bands. And for that reason alone I should probably have avoided writing about them. I, however, have always had a penchant for boldly rushing onto ground where wiser men fear to tread. Really it boils down to the fact that many of my favorite current songwriters cite this band as one of their major influences. That's why I'm talking about this San Francisco post-grunge, pop-punk, emoish rock band from the nineties.

But let's talk about this song and why it made the cut. The verses are all cut and dry typical emo. It starts out explaining that this will be a classic tale of being overwhelmed:

"I'm only pretty sure
That I can't take anymore,"

Followed by a question that restates the sort of I've-forgotten-what-we-were-fighting-about line that screams of Don Henley or Michael Bolton if they were punk:

"Before you take a swing
I wonder
What are we fighting for?"

This is a song of what was once a great romance that is now perfunctory and mundane. In the sarcastic words of Brian Regan, "You're really breaking new ground there, Copernicus." This song's emo cred it all built on the end when Stephan Jenkins screams out towards the end,

"Want to get myself back in again,
The soft dive of oblivion.
I want to taste the salt of your skin,
The soft dive of oblivion."

The emotion is there in the musical content, but the lyrics nod to the sense of nihilistic realism that is present in almost every emo song. Now, I know, that sounds dark, but let's face it: People in their late teens and early twenties think that the tell-tale signs of a romance fading is right next to the apocalypse on the calamity meter. That's what makes emo great: the unabashed emotional self-indulgence of wallowing in the grief of what is ultimately something a healthy, well-balanced individual will never think about when the "real world" hits. If you want healthy adult contemplative introspection, emo is definitely not the genre for you.

Day 1 - "In Circles" by Sunny Day Real Estate

"In Circles" by Sunny Day Real Estate

I don't know what it is about having clouds and rain 48 weeks a year that turns a city into an independent music factory (or causes so many musicians to be strung out on heroin), but there is just something about Seattle. My mom is from this area. I spent most of my summer and Christmas vacations in this area. And many of my favorite bands from my teenage years until today have been from this sun-deprived musical Mecca. Wheteher it was Nirvana (although Seatllites are quick to point out that Kurt Cobain was actually from Aberdeen), Pearl Jam (although Seatllites are quick to point out that Eddie Vedder was actually from So Cal), Alice in Chains, Pedro the Lion, or Death Cab for Cutie, the music of my teenage years carried with it musty tinge of this rain drenched City on the Sound (Puget, that is).

Signed to Sub Pop Records, (yes, the label that introduced us to Nirvana) Sunny Day Real Estate distinguished themselves from their grungy peers by focusing on melody. Emo is characterized by melody -- haunting, beautiful melody. Sunny Day Real Estate had melody is spades. While it wasn't the first band to be called emo, they were certainly the first to make it commercially viable. Their biggest LP, Diary, sold over 200,000 copies.

Hopefully you've listened to the song linked above. It's just about perfect. It starts with two piercing notes alternating like a siren and then crashes like a wave on top of you. Just as you're able to get your head above water after being pummled by the intro, Jeremy Enigk's haunting voice starts moaning these very sparse lyrics. It really is about the droning melody in this song. Don't bother reading the lyrics; you'll be disappointed. They obviously mean something to Enigk, and that's good enough because he's going to let you in to every rise and fall of passion in his soul. That crazy scream you hear right before the chorus tells the story of emo. It's usually sadness swelling to anger and back to melancholy again. The chorus is the real thrill of the song. Scream. Sing. Scream. "In Circles" isn't SDRE's most popular song, but it is the archetype for the emo that would follow it. When Emery moved to Seattle from South Carolina and were playing little clubs in Tacoma, it was "In Circles" they were playing to let the crowd know their cred. (At least that's what keyboardist/screaming banshee Josh told me at a Starbucks in the Mandalay Bay in Vegas told me once. Yeah, I'm a name dropper.) The drumming on this song is also exquisite. The unique sounding cymbals would be picked up by melodic hardcore and straight hardcore metal bands to follow.

The band broke up before it conquered the world, but not before leaving a legacy for countless bands to follow. The story goes that the band disbanded after lead singer, Jeremy Enigk, converted to Chrisitaninty. Two of the members went on to round out Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's solo project Foo Fighters after he recorded the first album playing all the instruments himself. SDRE has since reunited of and on for a couple of records. I've even heard there should be a new album coming out this year. We'll see. But for my money, it doesn't get much better than this emo standard. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I have.

I would be remiss If I failed to start out this journey by saying that were it not for the influence of my dear friend, college roommate, and musical counterpart, Bret Forrest Martin (ff you've met my son, I named my him after this guy), I don't know where I'd be musically. We shared similar taste in music when we met nearly fourteen years ago, but he introduced me to a world of underground, independent music that shook me to the core. I've turned him on to a bunch good stuff myself, but I don't think I'll ever be able to repay him for the way his unique musical tastes changed the course of my musical journey. He's a living legend, and, ladies, he's single. But seriously, thanks, Bret.

Next time, we will dive into some familiar territory and I will expose it's emo heart. You may be surprised by the emo that was walking around in front of our very eyes and accepted by the mainstream. Keep one eye open!

A 26 Day Celebration of Emo

I unabashedly love emo. Emo has a long and storied history. Recent years have seen a stereotyping and backlash against emo, but I don't care. I wasn't there at the origin in the local DC hardcore scene in the mid-80's, but I've been enjoying this varied genre of music for about 15 years in its subsequent forms, admittedly before I knew that it was called emo. As I've entered my 30's, I've seen many of my friends rest in their favorite genre of music and stop experimenting. If I were somehow forced to pick one box of cereal from the variety pack today and eat it everyday of my life (nod to City Slickers), I think I'd pick the emo catalog. I'm a fanboy. What can I say?

If you don't know what emo is, let me give you a VERY brief definition and history. Emo emerged from the hardcore punk scene and cast off the political nature of that movement in favor of subject matter that was individual, introspective, and...well, emotional. Hence the name. It took the aggressive energy of punk and combined it with the intense emotional scrutinization of a psychotherapist's couch with the requisite boxes of Kleenex and smeared mascara. While, as mentioned before, it has it's roots in DC in the mid-80's, it really took off at the same time as the alternative revolution of the early 90's. While musically emo owes most of its development to punk, denying its lyrical roots in the British New Wave/Goth/Shoegaze scene would be a huge mistake. Robert Smith of The Cure may not be the progenitor of emo, but he influenced nearly every lyricist who has worn that badge since. While a strong contingent of emo bands arose from the prolific Pacific Northwest during those days, emo wasn't limited to a specific region during its national emergence. Bands from the California Coast, Southwest, Midwest, Plains states, East Coast, and the South all staked their claim in what would become one of the dominant musical movements of the dawning of the new millennium.

Another reason I love this genre is because I've been a lifelong fan of Christian rock. Emo is one of the few genres within rock in which Christian artists been relevant with niche and mainstream success since the inception.

I have a habit of humming a song and then grabbing my laptop to play the song. I usually hit the Genius button in iTunes while the song is playing so I can listen to a variety of songs which share similar characteristics. Today it was "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades" by Brand New. The next song on the list was Liar (It Takes One to Know One) by Taking Back Sunday. One of the lyrics in that song is, "We got 26 days to work with..." A thought like an ember tossed from a fire jumped out in front of my mind's eye: I should write a blog post each day for 26 days celebrating some great song from emo's lifespan. I sat at the kitchen table and began to type.

So, comb your bangs over one eye. Don your garb, whether its some flat front slacks, tight black t-shirt, and pea coat; sweater vest, skinny tie, and horn-rimmed glasses; or maybe primary colored skinny jeans, band t-shirt, and black wrist band. Join me in a lovefest of songs that are usually about love loss.

Tomorrow I will commence by extoling the emo etymon, Sunny Day Real Estate. Prepare to get dizzy.