Merchant Ships - For Cameron

For years screamo disgusted me. It wasn't just the lack of musicianship and quality songwriting in the genre's commercial bands (Bring Me The Horizon, Brokencyde, etc. Yeah I know not screamo but they are called screamo and it's all I knew at the time.), but also the fans who attached themselves to it, people who looked for sympathy, who looked for problems, who cursed their parents and their middle-class backround and wore too much makeup and didn't realize how lucky they were.

Then I heard this EP. At first I didn't like it. Too heavy for emo, not heavy enough to be metal. The vocals were good but it all seemed too much like what I wanted to avoid.

But something drew me back to it. And one day it clicked. I checked out the lyrics, and I found tales of alienation, broken families, fear of death, and the importance of friends. The EP is very strong partly due to it's structure. The first 3 songs are pure screamo, cruel, cold and empty. Both the songs and the lyrics paint an atmosphere of intense claustrophobia, and the pounding drums mimic an anxious and depressed mindset.

The next 3 songs are completely different. Sleep Patterns is a haunting acoustic spoken word piece and builds up perfectly to the next track, Good Weekend, which has almost a pop punk feel, as the band shout "NO REGRETS" and things start to look up. The finale, Something That Matters is the best song the band have written, and one of the best in the last 10 years. Huge drums, intricate guitars, tense build-ups, shouts, screams and singing about the importance of friendship.

Merchant Ships broke up after this EP, and if they will ever reunite seems uncertain. But as long as we have this, it might just be ok.

9/10

http://www.mediafire.com/?ayegdlmezjr

Movies Like Juno - Best song ever written.

First of all, sorry for the recent lack of posts. This was due to exams and post-exam fatigue.

The good news is I have a lot of albums I plan to review, and a few lists and playlists I plan to compile (with respective m e d i a f i r e ).

The bad news is I'm too tired to attempt any of that so instead I'm going to write about Movies Like Juno.

In my eyes it's the perfect song. It's the final track on the Inside Jokes EP by Midwest Pen Pals, a short-lived indie emo group. The 6 song EP is the only thing they've released. The band were formed from the ashes of the late, great screamo group Merchant Ships. But whereas Merchant Ships buried their uplifting melodies under layers of furious guitars and screams, MPP wear their hearts on their sleeves, and unlike the 10000's of other bands with "personnel intimate" lyrics, they really mean it.

The EP itself is good but nothing overly memorable. Then it starts. A delicate, twirling guitar riff opens, followed by crashing, emotive chords. The song's power lies in it's unpredictability as well as it's unfaltering emotion - we have a minute long intro, a trade off between a father and son in the form of screams and desperate vocals, and a spoken word piece, all in 4 minutes. The lyrics are outstanding, not in terms of their aesthetic merit, but rather the placement in the song and delivery, it feels more like a diary entry than anything else.

The spoken word piece manages to be the songs turning point, before then the narrator is filled with self pity and anger, blaming his father for his mother leaving and screaming "why am I always sad". But the spoken word piece changes everything, an honest, uplifting piece about how one day he'll forgive his mother, and things fucked up, but they're going to be alright.

I can't directly relate with the lyrics in this song, especially seeing as it's so personnel. But it's exploration of themes such as self pity, forgiveness and mistakes is so honest and real, it's impossible to listen through the song without feeling something.

Is it the best song ever? To me it is. I haven't heard a song that goes through such a range of emotions so successfully.

But hey, if you know one that does it better, let me know.

Inside Jokes EP - http://www.mediafire.com/?az2jjyutxzj