Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends Review
Posted by Eric Katz on 08.27.2002
Taking Back Sunday blows the listener away with their debut cd, “Tell All Your Friends”.
The Juliana Theory’s new release is entitled “Emotion is Dead.” While emotional hardcore, commonly known as “emo” may be dead, emotion sure isn’t. Just look to the new wave of emo. It’s getting played all over MTV and the radio. Leading the way is Weezer, The Get Up Kids, Dashboard Confessional, Saves The Day, and Thursday. But no release in 2002 under this “genre” comes close to Tell All Your Friends.
Taking Back Sunday is a 5 piece “emo-core” band from Long Island. They’ve been playing for several years, but only recently has the band emerged, after their original singer left and Adam Lazarra switched from bass to lead singer. After releasing a highly touted demo cd to record labels, they were signed by Victory Records and went to work on Tell All Your Friends. This cd simply blows every other emotional cd out of the water.
From the start, you can tell it will be a journey heart-wrenching emotion. The first lyrics on the cd go, “so sick, so sick of being tired, and oh so tired of being sick.” Little twists on lyrics set Taking Back Sunday apart from other bands in their genre. While the subjects, (break ups, cheating, girls, and depression) are the same as most other pop punk/emo acts, the twists on them make them truly unique. Also, Adam and John Nolan (the lead guitars and other vocalist) write their lyrics in a mostly storyline form. When they sing however, they skip from one area to another.
With two singers, Taking Back Sunday gives a dynamic two-vocal structure to their song. Adam does the lead singing and John chimes in with alternative lines and occasional screams. The bass lines are simple enough, and the guitar chords and drum lines aren’t anything special. But the music finds a way to come together in an amazing way. Their top hit from the cd, Cute Without the “E” (Cut from the Team), starts with an almost pop-rock intro, and soon progresses into a song all it’s own. The chorus becomes extremely catchy; “and will you tell all your friends, you’ve got your gun to my head? This song was only wishful thinking, this song was only wishful thinking.” Meanwhile, in "Timberwolves At New Jersey", the lyrics state, "Literate and stylish, kissable and quiet, that's what girls dreams are made of. . . . that's all you need to know, you have it or you don't." The cd empathically ends with the song "Head Club", which ends with Adam, John, and producer Neil Reubenstein taking turns screaming or signing, "don't call my name out your window, I'm leaving."
In conclusion, Taking Back Sunday blows the listener away with their debut cd, “Tell All Your Friends”. Don’t call it a classic cd though; this is the formula for most up-coming bands today, but Taking Back Sunday spices it up into something really catchy and worth listening to.
The 411: Taking Back Sunday blows the listener away with their debut cd, “Tell All Your Friends”.
