Weekly Album: Week of 12/10 - 12/16 - Very Emergency

This week I listened to Very Emergency by The Promise Ring. Now I have listened to this album before, but it was several years ago when I first got into The Promise Ring and I don't think I gave it a fair shot. It was too different from what I came to love about The Promise Ring and I promptly dismissed it and never even bothered listening to it again, so I'm here to really give it a fair shot and try to discuss the album mostly without its relation to the band that produced one of my favorite Emo albums ever, that being Nothing Feels Good. This is a fairly middle of the road sounding poppy rock album. It sounds very of its day, one of those albums that like you know is from the late 90s but can't really place what band made it. It isn't necessarily bad, it sounds fairly good for that style, only missing some catchier hooks or some more interesting guitar playing. It just sounds like a ton of other bands. There just is not a lot of interesting things going on during the album to really keep me very interested. There are some little bright spots, like the occasions when a female vocalist shows up or when the strings show up on, "Things Just Getting Good". Those help break up the nothingness the album instills in me, like an empty void wishing for interesting rock music. 

Now it is time for me to address The Promise Ring of it all. The Promise Ring were an Emo band in the 90s that were a part of the whole midwest scene that had formed around then. The frontman, Davey Von Bohlen, was in Cap'n Jazz and once they broke up put his focus on The Promise Ring. Their second album, the aforementioned Nothing Feels Good, is to me a nearly perfect blend of Emo and pop-sensibilities. It still has a lot of punk energy and the wistful feeling that tends to accompany Emo, but the songs are a little more condensed and the band was not afraid to be catchy. They had catchy riffs and memorable lyrics and melodies that are fun to sing along to. It boggles my mind that this album was the follow up to that. I understand that the band had wanted to move away from the Emo labeling, but they had nearly perfected their sound and honestly Nothing Feels Good is fairly accessible to those not into Emo. I don't understand how they could just abandon everything that made the band's sound work in favor of this 90s rock derivative and it greatly saddens me as a fan of their first two albums. 

So based on all of this, I don't think my opinion of the album has changed very much since I first heard it. Even separating the history of the band prior to this album, it still is just a fairly okay, middle of the road album. The nothingness I feel listening to the album is very much an emergency. 6/10