posted 09/24/2008 (Wed) @ 08:00 am
>>> Music Reviews
Emarosa - Relativity (2008)
Alternative Rock / Punk
Special v. General Emarosa
- The Past Should Stay Dead
- Just Another Marionette
- What’s A Clock Without The Batteries?
- Heads Or Tails? Real Or Not
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mothers
- Her Advice Cost Us A Life
- Set It Off Like Napalm
- Sailing In The Dark Isn’t Smart Kid!
- Pretend. Release. The Close
- It’s Cold In The Shade, Let’s Move To The Sun….
- I Still Feel Her: Part I
- A City Called Coma: Part II
Relatively speaking, vocalist Jonny Craig is fighting a custody battle. Formerly the lead singer of Dance Gavin Dance, he and his stunning voice left that band to form Emarosa. Now, his sandpaper-throated, yet melodic, yell-singing carries Emarosa and listeners into oceans of adrenaline. But his key technique—the way his vocal cords strain and distort as he reaches for his favorite note—is a weakness as much as a strength. It’s unique, but overused. Ask his karmic contemporary Anthony Green about that phenomenon.
Emarosa immediately establish their sound with the ear-catching opener, “The Past Should Stay Dead,” a dense, dual guitar wall of sound supported by big washes of rhythm guitar and tied together by simple, catchy, repeated riffs. Spotlights immediately and permanently affix on Craig’s spellbinding howls: “All at once it leaves you breathless/ With next to nothing but open hands.”
The obscured, tender, whispered vocals go missing, but thunderclouds of six-string-birthed electric noise bathe Relativity like the best of early nineties shoegaze, just amped up a few extra watts. “Set It Off Like Napalm” opens with a spacious, pummeling riff filled out by Craig’s barely-restrained crooning. If that’s a problem for you, don’t worry: he quickly jumps back into sing-yelling for the harder bulk of the tune.
Like many other singers with a distinctive style, Craig’s work both imbues this record with his distinctiveness and pervades it with his favorite tricks. Even if all the other instruments are doing something wildly interesting (which happens sadly not as often as it could), Emarosa basically end up as The Jonny Craig Bar Band, playing, at times, animatronic puppet roles for Craig’s personal musical Disneyland. It’s not to say that (some of) the songs aren’t heart-pounding in their intensity (the NASA shuttle launch ferocity of “The Past Should Stay Dead” keeps coming to mind), but a dog can only “Roll over!” so many times in a row before it ceases to be as impressive.
Something about their tone and composition suggests that Saosin devotees would love these songs. If the full length from that band (sans Green) wasn’t enough, or fell short by coming off too “poppy,” Emarosa just might fit the bill. Just watch out: this voice might launch a thousand ships, but they’ll all sink under the weight of their fixations if they aren’t careful.
Tags: alternative, anthony green, circa survive, dense, hard rock, saosin, vocalists
