Excellence for your ears - After hearing one of their songs, I bought this CD duo - and after the first listen only one other song had caught my attention, but after a day or two in and out of the car.... I love this whole CD! Max s voice and lyrics combined are truly amazing and captivating.Tracks I can t not mention:Disc 11. Belt4. Alive with the Glory of Love5. Yellow Cat/Red Cat7. Spidersong9. Every Man Has a Molly10. Slowly, through a vectorAlso, on Disc 2 #1 Wow, I Can Get Sexual TooIf indie meets emo with a little edge and great lyrics is your kind of music... you won t regret getting into Say Anything!
Their Best Overall Album - if you are new to this band and wondering where to start, look no further. this double disc effort was a breath of fresh air in a genre that has been getting worse and worse. call it emo or punk or pop but this is good music. the only song i didnt care for was the most beautiful plague. other than that every song is different and really well done. highlights include: wow, i can get sexual too, belt, total revenge, and woe. this is the best say anything cd by far.
A very interesting CD - Is a Real Boy is a great CD and a great start for a very interesting band. The lead singer, Max Bemis, faces a lifelong battle with bipolar disorder. He spent most of his high school and college career doing drugs to combat his lows from bipolar disorder. Before this CD was completed he committed himself to theraputic help after spending an amount of time in a paranoid depression. This took place shortly before the release of this CD. Throughout this CD, (as the booklet describes) Max tells it all exactly as he sees it and his thoughts and feelings all went into these songs and lyrics and sure enough, this is an excellent CD lyrically, providing great insight into a person who was going through a very hard time as he recorded this. It also helps that he delivers his lyrics with such conviction and such emotion and wit that he s easily one of the best and most interesting singers/songwriters in rock music today. The songs on here go from songs about love to songs about how hypocritical society is, and even child abuse and songs dealing with drugs and lonliness. Really interesting stuff, and it s these concepts and ideas, as well as the melodic moments and an overall indie punk rock sound, that make this such an enjoyable CD. It was definitely not created with the mass market in mind, some of these songs are unapproachable unless you know what to expect, and some songs don t really become Good until you hear the whole thing. Songs like Woe start out being a little weird but by the end, enter a melodic and meaningful zone and finish on a great note. Other songs like Belt may seem a bit weird at first due to the subject matter but they turn out to be fast, almost punk sounding songs that are just fun to listen to. It s a CD where you re never sure what s going to happen next, and it s one that I ll keep listening to for a long time. The CD isn t perfect. Sometimes the themes in these songs and lyrics (some of which obviously written under the influence of drugs) are so tangled and hard to decode for possibly anyone but Max himself. Others are a little on the slow side or come off as being a bit whiny, (The Futile, Every Man has a Molly, and Slowly Through a Vector).Some flaws aside, it s a great and dark CD. While it s not as good as the band s sophmore effort and masterpiece, In Defense of the Genre, it s a great CD for new fans to the band to check out before diving into that 2-disc monster.Is a Real Boy also comes with a second CD, recorded after Max began treatment and sobered up, (called Was a Real Boy, ) which features additional tracks. The feel to this CD s vastly different, some songs verge on acoustic, and the themes here are less dark than on the CD. Not to say they re devoid of darkness (Little Girls, for example) but others here, like Total Revenge, get rid of the edge entirely and are actually kind of gentle and sweet. Admittedly, this second disc isn t particularly great on its own, (several songs on here seem fairly aimless,) but it does provide an interesting listen and sense of closure to the life story told on disc 1. It s a solid add-on to the CD.Overall, it was a very promising start for this band and I hope they get bigger and find more fame down the road because this is a very talented band and they re unlike any rock music I ve ever heard.
One of the best, under the radar albums - I dont have much to say except that I think this band is truly under rated. I think the songwriting is amazing and the lyrics are just incredible. Pick this one up and you will be glad you did.
say what? - when i first heard say anything, it was the video for the song alive with the glory of love, which i liked. as i went on to listen to more songs, i just wasn t feeling it at all...not one bitbut somewhere throughout not feeling it, i began to feel it=), it just took awhile, i am sure we ve all had albums like that, where at first you hate it then you end up loving it almost as much as yr mother.well, i am not going to try and write an award winning review here, other than saying you need to get this record, being a musician myself, this album has inspired me on so many levels. i feel max bemis is onto something, and i can t stop listening to this stuff...find all of their ep s and misc recordings if you can too...appreciate say anything as a whole, from beginning to present...it s worth it...at the moment, my fav track is yellow cat/red cat...i really feel that song is brilliant, and it makes me wish i would have written it...thanks for reading my uninteresting but hopefully convincing review=)