Trollheart and Ki, thanks. Glad to be here in journal land.
One of the first emo bands I listened to was The Movielife. At the time, I was a pussy and dealing with a rough break-up in the early years of my college education. So I was sulking in my dorm room, using some Napster rip-off that my college endorsed and let us download from, when I stumbled upon The Movielife. I remember it was one of the 'recently downloaded' albums on the server or whatever, so I queued it to download without really knowing much about the band.
Turns out, the first song I heard from them was able to capture my pussy feelings pretty much perfectly. Here was the song:
My 19 year old self was like "Hey, hopefully in a few weeks I can feel this way" while downing 40 ounce hurricanes and stumbling through the dorm trying to avoid my RA. Basically the song is about being with someone and having wild, rough sex, then breaking up, and making up to be friends... My interpretation anyways. Of course it didn't work out that way. We got back together, had bought an apartment together, got a labrador, eventually had 2 kids in white suburban America, and listened to a lot of Top 40. She cooked and cleaned and I did yardwork and car repairs and we are living happily ever after to this day.
Just kidding, she started fucking a football player and I started pounding the pud of some freshman volleyball player. We eventually met up at Panera bread, then she came to my place 2 weeks later and we had wild sex, then we just let things deteriorate into a lot of bitter feelings and drunken phone calls I don't remember well. Haven't talked in a few years.
By the way, if you are about to tell me that The Movielife is actually pop-punk or whatever, please cram your laptop directly up your ass, jabroni. So moving on, I was listening to The Movielife for a few weeks until I found Alkaline Trio. Back in the day, I would wait until 3AM when the music videos came on MTV and VH1 and watch them all night out of a mixture of insomnia and lack of self discipline. I heard "Time To Waste" and thought it sounds pretty cool.
So I downloaded what I thought was Alkaline Trio's greatest hits CD, called Remains. Turns out, it's actually some weird collection of b-sides, EPs, and international releases. Not that it matters, it still rules. It had the uptempo rhythm I was looking for with a lot of really dark lyrics. Time to Waste, probably their biggest song to date, wasn't a very good predictor for what I would find within their other material. Their older stuff is especially punkish and noticeably less poppy.
I quickly became addicted to their sound and jammed to their first 3 CDs pretty much constantly. Everything after that is kind of hit or miss and much more poppy and less dark. Some of it kinda sucks but their old stuff, especially the Goddamnit and The Alkaline Trio CDs always have a place in my heart. I still relate a lot to the depressive alcohol-fueled lyrics.
Matt Skiba, their lead singer, also has some incredible solo stuff (if you check out his other bands, Heavens and Matt Skiba and The Sekrets, you will want to drown yourself). Maybe I will post some Skiba solo stuff another time but it's worth checking out. Alkaline Trio seems to be a nice bridge between pussy emo stuff and harder bands.
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