Motherfish #18 For Real- I Am Disappoint

New Music Tuesday

Ok I know I really dropped the ball these past few weeks. School was getting pretty intense, and in retrospect I probably should have focused a bit more on my classes. I came out relatively ok, but there are some things I need to work on for next fall. Besides school, moving home and then back to school was, like the rest of my life, an unorganized disaster mostly improvised and approached with much the same “fuck it, let’s do it live” bravado that I use in most situations. I’ve learned my lesson well, however. I doubt my English 204 professor is reading this, but if you are then I’m still really sorry for handing you the wrong paper. A few things to say regarding the past two weeks: Diego Paulo deserves a listen if you haven’t already done that. The other band I was going to feature I found out has split, which is a damn shame. So, I guess it wasn’t so bad that I missed their review last week. I’ve gotten some good feedback about featuring local bands, so you can expect to see that again sometime, though maybe not a whole month. June is going to be a crazy month, as I’ve got a lot of tricks up my sleeve for all of you. Not to mention a wicked farmer’s tan.

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New Again by Taking Back Sunday

I’ll admit, I’ve been a TBS fan for a while now. I have fond memories of watching the video for You’re So Last Summer and wondering who the funny looking black man in the video was (eventually I figured out it was Flava Flav, I don’t know how I could have been so blind). That album, I’m referring to Tell All Your Friends of course, still makes me nostalgia, and thus, makes me lose. But it’s a defeat I can comfortably sit in and reflect on days long gone. The next album in TBS’s career, Where You Want To Be, also had some shining moments that find their way onto some of my playlists. Louder Now was acceptable, but it just didn’t stand up to the other two albums. Every now and then I like to give Tell All Your Friends’ catchy hooks and moderately angsty tunes a listen, just to remind myself where I came from. When I compare it to the majority of what I listen to now, I’ve come a long way. And when I stand New Again next to its mates in the TBS discography, it’s obvious that they’ve come a long way as well. In a direction not necessarily relevant to my interests. New Again follows closely in the footsteps of Louder Now, not the MakeDamnSure footsteps mind you; but the trail blazed by the dozen or so other tracks that just fade from memory. It’s ironic that the title track, New Again, has the line “I am ready to be new again” because they’re not. If that’s what they were aiming for, they failed pretty hard. The album shouldn’t be called New Again so much as Louder Now Again. At least in that case, I would know what I was getting into. Some of the songs do have a similar feel as their sophomore release, the track Carpathia, for example, does a pretty solid job of taking the sound of their earlier work and tweaks it to incorporate the style they expounded on with Louder Now. And while Louder Now was a logical progression from Where You Want To Be (whether fans liked it or not, it made sense), New Again gives the impression that the band has reached a plateau, where they will sit and fester in stagnant bathwater surrounded by mosquitos. Like I said, Carpathia shows promise, and there are a few other brief instances where I’ll look up and think to myself ‘maybe next year’ like a child who only wanted one thing for Christmas, that one thing that meant more than anything else, and his parents tried so hard to make sure he got everything he wanted, but somehow the toy that was written on his list in bright green ink and surrounded by stars and unicorns somehow didn’t catch their eye. And the kid feels bad because when his parents look at him, so full of pride because they believe they’ve made all of his dreams come true, he’d be the ultimate asshole if he told them that they let him down. Taking Back Sunday, you’ve let me down.

Now I’m not saying the album is bad. There are some good songs besides Carpathia. The title track New Again is a fairly solid song; it’s bass heavy, which is interesting for a band with two guitarists. Structurally you would normally find this type of song in a three-person band, or four if the fourth member were a designated singer. The song develops into something a bit more expected of TBS. This is the song I’ve decided to present, not because it’s my favorite or anything like that, but because it serves as a representation of the album. The majority of tracks have the same kind of vibe and all have a similar feel. I’ll say this, the album doesn’t require much thought on the part of the listener. Its fairly generic alternative-rock-pop-punk-esque power chord and octave guitar riffs and high-pitched half-yelled vocals fade well into the background if you have to read or are on a long drive. The album is a crowd pleaser because there’s nothing special about it; you aren’t forced to decide whether you love it or hate it. There is a VERY distinct grey area here, and I fall smack dab in the middle of it. I can only hope that TBS was just experimenting a bit more with their Louder Now sound, and that any future releases will bring us back to the Taking Back Sunday we know and love. If you listen closely, there are glimpses of the old TBS to be had, so I tend to believe that despite this little foray further down the road to Generic City, the hearts of all the band members truly lie in their past and that that is where they are destined to return. But what do I know, I’m no doctor.

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Doesn’t it feel good to be back on some sort of schedule? It does for me. So yeah, Taking Back Sunday. Whatever. Next week we continue with the normal updates, and then something special. June should promise to be a cool month for Motherfish. Be easy.


Here's some music:


Thanks to youtube user chilla124 for the song. I couldn't post my own because of some weird thing with Interpol or something. I didn't really read it beyond "you're video has been muted".