Good songwriting doesn’t always require the absence of lyrical nonsense. Sometimes all you need is one memorable line that lends meaning to the gibberish that surrounds it. Tanner Jones of You Blew It! excels at this kind of songwriting. Take “Match & Tinder”, the first song from the Orlando emo band’s sophomore LP, Keep Doing What You’re Doing. At one point, Jones sings, “I’ll struggle to put your shoes over mine in my head and use it to piece together my confidence.” Immediately after that sentence, he adds this equally inscrutable grab-bag of nouns and verbs: “I can hardly breathe, so I’m scanning for space that lends asymmetry where I’ll put mind over matter to put this matter out of my mind.” Now, I’ve played “Match & Tinder” many, many times, because it has an addictively chunky riff and pleasurably hyperactive drumming and therefore is an excellent example of sensitive-dude melodic punk rock. But I never notice the aforementioned vocab casseroles when I’m listening. Because “Match & Tinder” (and the entirety of Keep Doing What You’re Doing) really boils down to the last line, which is kind of brilliant: “I’m having trouble trying to find the right way to say I feel less than confident.”
Keep Doing What You’re Doing is an “airing of grievances” record—Jones constantly directs his ire at an unnamed somebody who has somehow disappointed him, whether it’s the person with “habits” in “Regional Dialect” or the cretin who has given Jones “the displeasure of enduring your lack of manners” in “Rock Springs”. But the way he delivers these indignities—in a pained, shaky howl that’s constantly fighting to stay above the din of YBI!’s wondrously ringing guitars—is indicative of a guy who’s projecting his displeasure at himself onto others. Even when Jones is pointing the finger, he always sounds like the most vulnerable guy in the room. You know, typical emo stuff.
Since forming in 2009, You Blew It! have survived various lineup changes by zeroing in on the tenets of their genre like a religion. The group is not shy about proclaiming its influences—its Topshelf Records bio directly references emo O.G.s Cap’n Jazz and 00s torch-bearers Algernon Cadwallader, and says “YBI! cherrypicks from 90s emo and indie.” That’s exactly what YBI! did on its 2012 full-length debut Grow Up, Dude, where the band’s fat hooks were submerged (and occasionally torpedoed) by booming, fumbling production. If you’re 35 and grew up on Nothing Feels Good and LP2, Grow Up, Dude will make you feel 15 again. But it will also make you feel like you’re 15 if you’re actually 15. This is the difference between “retro” and “timeless”: Emo will remain eternally relevant because people of a certain age will always have trouble trying to find the right way to say I feel less than confident.
What sets Keep Doing apart from Dude is that, musically speaking, YBI! have grown in self-assurance by leaps and bounds. With the production assistance of scene stalwart Evan Weiss (who also plays bass on the record), You Blew It! have fashioned Keep Doing into a deeply satisfying, full-bodied, big-tent rock record. There are four credited guitarists in the liner notes, and it sounds like each of them contributed at least one guitar track to every song. “Award of the Year Award” is a perfectly spat gob of romantic petulance—Jones’ one killer line is “You can always consider me a friend, just strictly in the past tense”—set to over-amped power pop. The ballad “’Strong Island” opens with nearly 30 seconds of beautifully strummed power chords that usher in the bass-driven verse like a fanfare. By the closing number “Better to Best”, YBI! is in full-on anthem mode, with a triumphant chorus of "whoa"’s pushing Keep Doing toward the majestic grandiosity of arena rock.
The bugaboo among some of the scenesters that form the core of YBI!’s audience is that the band has been positioned in the music press as a leading proponent of the so-called “emo revival.” Those that have been paying attention all along understandably bristle at the revival talk. So let’s set that bothersome word aside: What’s really happening is an emo reclamation by a segment of the rock audience that bailed on the genre 10 or so years ago.
For a while, the itch for shouty, earnest guitar music was scratched by records like The Monitor and Celebration Rock, collections that were considered MOR indie, but would perhaps be marginalized in 2014, just as countless other punk and emo records from the past decade have been relegated to the corner. Now, a band like You Blew It! are poised to fill the role for frustrated listeners who can’t find loud, angsty rock'n'roll via traditional indie channels anymore. If this is the music that speaks to you, here is where the action now is. So, forget the emo revival—this is about two subsets of rock fans being pushed together by aspirational emo bands reaching beyond their niche on one side and the eclipse of traditional indie by mainstream pop on the other. Keep Doing What You’re Doing marks the precise point where these audiences meet, get drunk, and turn it up.
