I’ve only recently received Say Anything’s latest CD, their self-titled third release, and it’s difficult for me to review a disc with only a couple week’s worth of listening under my belt. What makes it even more difficult is that the group’s debut album, Is a Real Boy, is probably in my Top 10 of CDs. I can listen to that thing nonstop.
The problem I have with getting so invested in a particular CD by a particular group, though, is that any other release fails to measure up. So far, that’s the problem I’m running into with Say Anything. It’s a fine CD, but it’s no Is a Real Boy. I can sing along constantly to that CD, but this one just isn’t as catchy. It’s emotional, but it doesn’t seem nearly as personal.
The more I listen to this in order to write something about it, the more I come to dislike it, and that makes me sad. I liked this group’s first CD SOOOO much, and I don’t know if it’s that I put that one on a pedestal, or if this CD really isn’t all that great. There are only two songs that I can actually get behind, Hate Everyone and Do Better, and that’s not really enough to recommend this, even though I’ll probably always be a fervent supporter of Say Anything (and I still cringe everytime I listen to Do Better and hear the line about Will and Grace).
Here’s a video from one of the better songs on the CD, Hate Everyone. It does well to recapture the poppy, upbeat anger that fueled Is a Real Boy, but it still feels a bit manufactured, like Say Anything lead Max Bemis tried too hard to recapture what he had with his debut, just without the raw emotion.
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