Every other week, Ryanđșđžand DanđŹđ§give each other an album to listen to and then talk about it. Most of these albums will probably be some form of emo (at least to start). Yes, we are aware this would probably work better as a podcast.
Ryan: Whatâs popping Big Dog?
Dan: Heyo. I feel like this week is going to be fun. In that we probably both hated our assignments and this will be a cathartic debrief.
Ryan: Ok before we dive in here, letâs just set this up. This issueâs theme was Fueled By Ramen bands. I, a nice and cool friend, gave you a modern masterpiece. You, a bad person, gave me Cobra Starship.
Dan: It was a theme chosen by you.
Ryan: This is what being hoisted by your petard feels like, yes.
Dan: You saying "a modern masterpiece" about A Fever You Can't Sweat Out really shows our age difference. I am old now, I was old then, and I do not care for Panic! at the Disco. With or without the !
Ryan: Even with almost two decades to let it sit for a bit?
Dan: Two centuries would not have helped.
Ryan: Huh, I honestly thought youâd come back and be like âdamn this slaps.â
Dan: It slaps me in and around my face, maybe. It's already clear why you assigned me this, but give me the thought process anyway.
Ryan: I feel like what Iâve learned over the course of this newsletter is that you dig high-concept albums. You also love needlessly kitschy instrumentation. Also, youâre a lyrics guy. A Fever felt to me like it had the best shot of being a rediscovered gem for you.
Dan: Haha I mean you're not wrong, but this just misses every mark for me.
Ryan: Had you ever heard the whole thing before?
Dan: Yes, once I think. Right when it first came out. I didn't listen to it twice. I know we shouldnât talk about Brand New, but Urie clearly wanted to do that only without any of the depth.
Ryan: If I recall several of the songs on the album are literally pulled from Chuck Palahniuk novels. Which is, uh, a choice lmao.
Dan: Pair that with a producer trying his hardest to try his hardest, and it comes out overcooked and underdone.
Ryan: This is fascinating to me because I literally cannot objectively hear those songs separate from my own nostalgia. Each song is assigned to a different New England Wendyâs drive-thru for me.
Dan: I think because it wasn't my scene, or my part of the scene, I have no nostalgia for it, and maybe no patience either. I also have no love or nostalgia for Cobra Starship, but I had to find a band on the Fueled by Ramen roster that you maybe hadn't heard.
Ryan: Well, like you, this was an album I had probably heard once and that was it. And also like you, there should be a lot about this I liked but I actually struggled getting through it.
Dan: I mean, same. I listened to it before I sent it to you and was like yeah, nope. But I still sent it.
Ryan: Itâs devoid of humor or joy while also desperately trying to create both. Itâs so wildly cynical. I think itâs a truly evil album.
Dan: Theyâre clearly terrible people making music for terrible people.
Ryan: Was there anything you LIKED about Panic! At The Disco?
Dan: I mean there's the obvious banger, it's hard to hate, but even then I wouldn't choose to listen to it â if it's not 2am at an emo revival night.
Ryan: What did you think of the two halves thing. The switch from like what dance music to ragtime?
Dan: I was pleased when the techno stopped, but also not pleased at what it was replaced by. I want to know if you love the âSnakes on a Planeâ song, because I would choose to listen to that over most of Panic.
Ryan: So hereâs a thing. I hated that song even back when it came out. I hate that song that I couldnât even finish it for my review. Someone played that song at a karaoke party I was at a few weeks ago and I had to go outside for air.
Ryanâs album for Dan:
A Fever You Can't Sweat Out by Panic! At The Disco
TL;DR: It sounds like an advert for Ritalin Â
Tell me more:Â For the few who don't know, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out was Panic! At the Disco's debut album, recorded in the weeks after the band graduated high school. It sold 4 million copies worldwide, so someone liked it. But that someone was not me. Not in 2005. Not now.
Back in '05 I was deep into my Brand New, TBS, Thursday, The Used... that whole crowd. Panic to me sort of symbolised what happened to emo and pop punk in the latter half of the decade, and I don't say that in the positive. I was not really a fan of the whole cabaret vibe, all top hats and jazz hands. They were the catalyst for emo's "hair metal" phase. All style, little substance.
âI Write Sins Not Tragediesâ obviously became a scene staple, along with âTime to Danceâ and âLying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have...â so I've heard these songs a lot in the past 15 years, but the album as a whole largely escaped me. I say largely. I did listen to it at some point around 05/06, but I didn't give it more than a once over and that was a blissfully long time ago.
I've listened to Fever through half a dozen times in the past week, and it has not grown on me. It's busy, wordy (those long-ass song titles are your first clue) and for the most part, unpleasant to listen to. The back half of the album at least drops the techno breakdowns, but the whimsical baroque-inspired instrumentals we get instead aren't much better.
There might have been merit in the songwriting but there's no room to hear it. The production kills everything dead. You know that meme about Whole Foods selling individual oranges and bananas wrapped in plastic, completely missing that nature did a fine job with their packaging? A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is the musical equivalent of that. Plastic wrapped and over produced, any natural talent suffocated in cellophane.
Albums written in the studio tend to sound like this. Having a bunch of computers at your disposal â and no restraint or decency â bands just keep throwing bits in, cutting and pasting in a pro tools circle jerk until no-one remembers what the song was supposed to sound like in the first place. I don't know which songs the band had demoed before the recording sessions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the ones that went on to be the singles.
This is a lot harsher than I might have been back in 2005, when I was 22 and Urie was 18. I didn't like the music, but I'd have been more impressed by his lyricism then. How he seemed to have so much to say. These days I know the difference between saying something and simply saying a lot. A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is using a lot of words, but I'm not sure it's saying anything.
Favourite song(s): âI Write SinsâŠâ I guess. I won't be mad if it comes on in the middle of an emo playlist. âLying Is The Most Fun...â is good until it leaks into techno in the last 20 seconds.
Emoji rating: đ©/5
Danâs album for Ryan:
While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets by Cobra Starship
TL;DR: This album is cursed
Tell me more: Here's the deal, I wanted to like Cobra Starship's While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets. I was genuinely excited about revisiting it. Aside from their Snakes On A Plane cash-grab â which I still very much hate â I had become convinced over the last 14 years that maybe Cobra Starship was on to something. In many ways, the band seemed like they were ahead of the now very common emo-tinged EDM trend. I had a hunch that their first album probably had some real diamonds in the rough on it. Some raw, but fun dance tracks that were actually doing some innovative stuff before they got big.
Unfortunately, my hung was wrong. This album is dog shit and time has only made it sound more ugly and insane.
All you need to know about the general zeitgeist that created a musical project like Cobra Starship can be gleamed by perusing their Wikipedia article, which contains some of two of the most chilling lines ever written:
Cobra Starship was formed in 2005 after Midtown bassist Gabe Saporta took a trip to the deserts of Arizona. During this time, Saporta went on a "vision quest", spending time with Native American tribes and smoking peyote.
andâŠ
Saporta rented a house in the Catskill Mountains and began writing what would become the band's debut album, While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets. He posted a parody response to Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" titled "Hollaback Boy" on Myspace.Â
Thatâs how this group formed! Thatâs unacceptable. How did no journalist at the time be like, âyo what the fuck are you talking about?â
Sonically, thereâs really nothing of value here. Saportaâs synths are dumb in the dumb way, his beats are Garageband-loop level, his lyrics read like someone who has heard about partying, but doesnât seem to have ever been to a party. This album feels like a million missed chances at actually making something of value. It also constantly name-drops Brooklyn as like a cool place to be, which hurt my soul in a deep and carnal way.
From its eye-rolling song titles, like âItâs Amateur Night At The Apollo Creed!â or âThe Church Of Hot Addiction,â to its dumb Gym Class Heroes cameo, to the fact it was heavily promoted as an album Made By A Friend Of Pete Wentz, the whole thing feels both inauthentic and aware of its own inauthenticity! Itâs the musical equivalent of the cool guys at your middle school getting up at the talent show and half-assing a Jay-Z lip sync and everyone cheering, not because theyâre any good, but just because they got up there and did it and theyâre already cool.
Favorite Song(s): I mean, âThe Kids Are All Fucked Up,â âItâs Warmer In The Basement,â âSend My Love To The Dance Floor Iâll See You In Hell (Hey Mister DJ),â I guess??!!!
Emoji Rating: đđ„Ž/5
Ryan: Huh, so we really gave each other a bad time this week.
Dan: I could have been nicer about A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, but it was more fun not to be.
Ryan: Thatâs ok, I genuinely hate When The City Sleeps.
Dan:It's nice that you're not always giving me the best album I've never heard, makes it feel more even somehow.
Ryan: Picking songs this week is gonna be interesting.
Dan: That was my only concern with Cobra Starship. A joke at our playlist's expense.
Ryan: I think Iâve got a track that wonât kill it lmao. But boy was it hard. I was split between âSend My Love To The Dance Floor...â and âThe Kids Are All Fucked Upâ because theyâre both almost real songs.
Dan: I had to queue it up on Spotify just now because I forgot this album as soon as I heard it but yeah this sounds like a song.
Ryan: Thatâs all you can ask for really. What about you? What Hot Topic anthem are you bringing to the table?
Dan: I mean if I can't have âI Write Sins...â I'm genuinely stuck.
Ryan: Letâs do it! Remember, I love the whole album haha.
Dan: âLying Is The Most Fun...â is good until the last 20 seconds.
Ryan: I honestly love all the weird shit off this. Itâs an album with incredibly strange twists and turns.
Dan: Okay well if you'd rather have that I'm easy, I did put you through a lot.
Ryan: Yeah letâs do âLyingâŠ,â I had to queue it up just now and I forgot how much of a banger it is.
Dan: Happy wife, happy life.