Is it a hit, *hit or miss?

Taking Back Sunday -  Tell All Your Friends by Dan Grote

Taking Back Sunday -  Tell All Your Friends 
Label: Victory Records
Rating: 

An emo band from New Jersey? The devil you say! Taking Back Sunday are one of the latest in a series of melodramatic pop punk acts to hail from the Garden State, in a list that includes Thursday (the really angry ones from two days before) and Saves the Day (the ones that don�t scream but fantasize about your death).

So where does Taking Back Sunday fit into the genre that boasts Chris Carraba as its poster-boy? Well, they scream and fantasize about your death. Honestly, if they didn�t end so many of their songs in tantrums, �Tell All Your Friends� would probably be a very engaging pop album. However, somebody in the band had to go and fight with their girlfriend in a parking lot and run right to the studio to scream about wanting to kill himself. That�s the general theme of the album. That and alienation. Anything worth bringing a fifteen year-old boy to the verge of tears, really. Some call this particular offshoot of emo �screamo.� Taking Back Sunday, however, don�t so much scream as whine loudly.

The album�s most disturbing lyric, naturally, is from �There�s No �I� in Team�: �Best friends means I pulled the trigger, best friends means you get what you deserve.� What is it about emo kids and killing peers? And it�s not the only time the band brings out the gun. In fact, in the previous song, �Cute without the �E� (Cut from the Team),� the lead singer croons, �which would you prefer, my finger on the trigger or me face down across your floor?� This kid really wants to fire a gun at somebody. The whole world must be against him or something. Man, high school sucks.

But seriously, the hard part about listening to this album is that sometimes, Taking Back Sunday create these gorgeous pop melodies, which makes it kind of hard when all the gun imagery and loud whining shows up. Musically, the biggest 180 on the album is on �The Blue Channel.� The song opens up with a piano ballad that was almost 100% lifted from Van Hagar�s �Right Now,� and then leads into the singer whining loudly at a girlfriend whose been keeping secrets from him, bellowing over a mantra of �honestly.�

VERDICT: There are times when �Tell All Your Friends� is a very pretty pop album, which is saying something given the deluge of pop punk and emo that has risen up to replace nu metal as of late. But Taking Back Sunday�s oft-putting angst will either disturb the unprepared or, eerily enough, be something to identify with. Picture the cute, sensitive kid in band becoming the next Columbine kid. In short, if you do identify with TBS, for the love of God, put the gun down!