Say Anything: Not-So-Guilty Pleasure

Picking individual songs off this record is next to impossible. I'll refer to my blurb from my "Top 20 Albums of 2006" post (...is a Real Boy was #3) and repeat: "[the album] is a masterpiece...It's a veritable rock opera with one of the most enigmatic singer/songwriters imaginable (Max Bemis spent time in a mental hospital while recording this album for legitimate reasons). If Queen met up with Pinocchio and made a record with lots of sexual frustration throughout, this is what it would sound like."

It's a concept album, absurdly ambitious and dripping with sarcasm and vitriol, lyrically near-perfect. Max is clinically bi-polar, diagnosed as such after a mental breakdown during the recording of the album. He apparently was convinced his bandmates were filming him naked in order to make porn.

This record is almost 3 years old and singles are still getting airplay. Apparently they are planning on releasing a double album this year, which is scary. I don't know how anything could surpass this monumental debut. I know a few people who are unconvinced about Say Anything, but sometimes you just need the right few songs to get you started or you never will. Regardless, I can put this album on and immediately feel like I'm in the first row, air-drumming, yelling the lyrics back. It's a good feeling. They are playing at the NorVA tonight and I have to work. Very sad am I.

Listen:
Woe - "All the words in my mouth that the scene deemed unworthy of letting out banded together to form a makeshift militia and burrowed bloodily through my tongue and my teeth..."
I Want to Know Your Plans - "If you could forgive me for being so brash, you could hit me or whip me. I'd savor each lash."
Admit It!!! (probably the best anti-scene song ever written) - "I spend hours in front of the mirror making my hair elegantly disheveled. I worry about how this album will sound, because I believe it will determine the amount of sex I will have in the future."
[from ...Is a Real Boy|buy]