Under The Influence

Apparently if you're looking for the person responsible for the uprising of the Emo subculture you should start with this guy.

This album, and Screaming Infidelities in particular, just happened to be right there when the gossip scene decided to start whispering about Emo. I'm sure the term had been around for eons before then - as I've mentioned before the music and attitude certainly have.

The song-writing is really enjoyable and the performance seems fairly honest. It's all acoustic which I like too. Guess I should probably give Emo more of a chance.

Ahhh, so this is Emo? I've been avoiding Emo, well, as much as one can when it's blaring from nearby TVs and Radios. For those not in the know it's all about Emotions (get it?)... and showing them. I guess we had the same thing - just Teen-angst music like The Smiths or NIN or whatever your particular flavour happens to have been. The difference is that here it's given an official name and has the culture/fashion stylings to go with it.

The sound has clearly evolved from skater punk, though it now comes equipped with a rock/metal edge. The singing style is that nasally thing Greenday and so on used to (still) do. Oh, and the lyrics speak for themselves - "Look out kid, 'cos here it comes - you're not the lucky ones". Basically they've taken the it's-fun-to-be-a-kid soul out of skater punk and replaced it with it's-hard-to-be-a-kid angst.

Truthfully is actually pretty good, overproduced but that seems to be the norm these days. Really over-compressed too. Someone needs to tell those dickheads up at the big labels that making the whole thing loud at the expense of dynamic range won't sell more records. It just spoils the impact.