A self-indulgent emo concept album

Emo music without any actual emotional resonance can be extremely irritating. The genre’s no-holds-barred, unabashedly confessional approach has led to some excellent albums, but when the same styles are employed with uninspired content, the results have a hollowness that is rarely found elsewhere. In making an emo album, a writer must bring a sense of universality to specific personal difficulties in order to reflect the more fundamental issues facing humans. Otherwise, the music usually seems like tiresome whining. A mere echo chamber for the singer’s personal grievances, only demonstrating his self-absorption. Readers can probably guess which category the new Say Anything album, Oliver Appropriate, falls into from the fact that it is a concept album about the struggles of being an emo singer.

On their eighth and final album, Say Anything construct a loose narrative based around a musician named Oliver, who is struggling with all the cliched burdens of a tortured artist: drug and alcohol abuse, sex without connection and the all-encompassing modernity. The degree to which Oliver serves as a stand-in for frontman Max Bemis is unclear, though the two obviously resemble one another. The use of a fictional character allows Bemis to increase the edginess factor by saying controversial things—threatening to slit his lover’s throat, for example—without completely claiming these words as his own. Throughout the album, Oliver talks about drugs (a lot), reflects on his past and grapples with the modern condition. Meanwhile, Bemis demonstrates that he doesn’t really have anything to say.

On the first three tracks, Bemis uses drug addiction to add a poetic veneer of desperation to his words. While in concept this is a nice thought, Bemis does not effectively dig into the root of drug addiction in these tracks. Perhaps artists who focus gratuitously on substance abuse (or any other type of debauchery, for that matter) would make more evocative music if they wrote instead about the reasons that people turn to the substances. “The Band Fuel,” which serves as the audience’s introduction to Oliver, provides meager character development: he is someone who drinks a lot and likes Julian Casablancas.

Transitioning from alcohol to uppers, “Days” narrates a sleepless binge and, lest listeners miss the point, includes the repetitive refrain of “It’s been days without something in my nose / It’s been days / It’s been days.” With its upbeat pop-punk instrumentation, this song seems to be romanticizing Oliver’s haggard state. On the subsequent “Pink Snot,” Bemis continues to chart our hero’s descent into addiction with lyrics such as, “I’m a pill man…I like my pills.” After this opening trio, listeners may begin to worry that the album will remain in the same rut for its duration. However, then Bemis launches into social commentary. This turn in direction is sadly even less interesting than the album’s beginning.

The fourth track, “Greased,” is a rather confusing diatribe on modern times and the people who live there, complete with a Trump reference, though the message remains vague. Oliver/Bemis proceeds to announce his conversion to feminism after previously “feeding drinks to women I’d laugh at when they’d think amongst my friends” (Uh…congratulations. Get this man a medal). Here, it becomes clear that Bemis is just as confused about his point as the listener. Developing Oliver’s lack of emotional connection, “Ew Jersey” laments the frivolity of his sex life. It also contains the line, “I’m hardly able to ever feel as high as I feel tonight / ‘Cause I’m actually high,” which seems almost tongue-in-cheek, but Bemis’ impassioned vocal delivery indicates otherwise.

On that subject, the album’s vocals could be seen as a redeeming quality; Bemis intermittently produces some creative growls and moans, but these moments do not compensate for the lyrics, which (in case the examples provided above were insufficient), include “I’m leaking pheromones and she’s super stoned” (from “Mouthbreather”) and “Fuck, I’m hot and I’m worth hating” (from “When I’m Acid”). Instrumentally, Say Anything rely on overly-produced arrangements, with guitar parts that range from intimate acoustic strumming to the more energetic power chords of the choruses. On “Your Father,” they sound like Blink-182 without a sense of humor, and at one point on “It’s a Process,” they use rhythmic, contorting guitar licks that resemble Modest Mouse’s style, but feel less raw and much more sugary. For the most part, however, they stick to such a conventional pop-punk sound that it is difficult to trace their influences.

The closer’s obligatory grand moment of emotional catharsis arrives when, right on cue, Bemis screams “Sediment!” (this is also the title of the song), and the guitar erupts to inform everyone that Oliver’s internal conflict has come to a head. Afterward, Bemis launches into a spoken-word section where he talks about Percocet and says he wants to find “someone to love me the way my parents never did.” Hopefully, he will.