Just like
with metal, I was the antithesis to all things “emo” during high school. I
holed up in 90’s punk and ska, shunning almost anything that deviated from my
favorite sounds, defaming any band sporting the label “punk” without meeting my
ridiculous and retrospectively uninformed definition. Even when a mix CD of
various emo and skramz bands fell into my possession, I saw it only as silly,
as worthless, despite the fact that some of those songs were actually really,
really good.
There are
few songs left in my head from that gifted mix of emo, but one tune, "Basement Ghost Singing" by Armor For
Sleep always stood out to me as the top track. And when I stumbled upon a $3
used copy of that song’s parent record, What to Do When You Are Dead, I
picked it up as a joke, assuming that I would again be delightfully
disappointed by how bad it was. But when I popped it into my CD player on the
way home, I was immediately overwhelmed by how good, by how real, the music
felt to me. I found myself addicted to its heady, emotional tunes, and much to
my chagrin, I loved every second of it.
Primarily composed by lead singer Ben Jorgensen, What To Do When You Are Dead sounds like
the inside of a manic-depressive’s diary: the guitars rage through distorted
power chords, Nash Breen wavers between gentle beats and crash-ridden grooves,
and Jorgensen howls in a voice familiar with despair. While almost every song
follows the same structural formula, there is a great variance in dynamics
across and even within those songs, spacing valleys of emotive breakdowns and
melodies between mountains of sound and fury. And when Armor For Sleep does reach
for loud and fast, they give it their all, throwing themselves wholly at their
instruments.
Just as
Armor For Sleep employs heavy dynamic changes across the record, so too do they
vary their sound palate. Between punk thrashers like “The Truth About Heaven” and
“The More You Talk, The Less I Hear,” the band inserts gentler pieces, delving
into post-hardcore melodies on “Awkward Last Words” and “Walking at Night, Alone.” They further explore sound by genre-hopping a bit, tacking on an
orchestral outro to “Awkward Last Words” and filling out the closer “The End of a Fraud” with a gospel chorus. For “A Quick Little Flight,” they even eschew
the rock aesthetic completely, opting instead to voice the song entirely with a
droopy keyboard and an electronic beat.
On What
To Do When You Are Dead, Armor For Sleep expertly steers their brand of
pop-punk through vastly different sonic territories, but no more so than in “Basement
Ghost Singing,” the song that introduced me to this act. Floating into
existence on a spacious guitar and an ethereal vocal, the band layers
electronica and emo in their sound, adding programmed drums and layers of
reverb and delay that soundscape a lonely afterlife. Even Anthony Dilonno’s
bass seems dialed into a more synthesized tone to reflect the atmospheric shape
of the song, which unexpectedly explodes into a finale of pessimistic
punk. According to Jorgensen, “Basement Ghost Singing” shows the band taking a chance at being different, and while most other acts
would have flopped hard trying to blend two antithetical sounds, this band
absolutely nails it.
Armor For
Sleep absolutely knocks their instrumentation out of the park on this record,
but when listening to the lyrics, I remember why my younger self had such a
hard time appreciating this style of music. Though the record’s title gives it
away, the writing on What to Do When You Are Dead is ridiculously
depressing. Jorgensen’s lyrics are loaded with a combination of self-pity and
self-loathing; his final moan of “I would still die for you” in “Car
Underwater” is more melodramatic than the lead in a high school play. Similarly,
the lines “I started feeling bad for myself today / But then I stopped ‘cause I don’t care” in “Stay on the Ground” are so dripping with angst that it’s
difficult to give Jorgensen’s complaints any credence.
The vocal
tone of What to Do When You Are Dead is blatant despair and zero
variation, and I can sum up my initial assessment of the record’s lyrics with
an exaggerated eye roll. Yet, the fact that WTDWYAD is in fact a loose
concept record really helps justify the outward depressive self-indulgence. As
Jorgensen describes it, the concept combines “death and heartbreak” into
one scenario that the album explores simultaneously, taking teenaged torment
and applying it to a much broader topic.
Beginning
with a hidden pregap track, the album tells the story of a distraught
lover who takes his own life, only to find his soul stuck on earth. He spends
his afterlife pining for his unrequited lover, while finding ways to accept the
consequences of his rash decision. When read on a whole, the lyrical concept
actually suggests a journey through the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief,
painting the protagonist’s journey of dealing with his own death as well as the
loss of his loved one. Thus, the whiny line “I wanna live again” in “Awkward Last Words” suddenly becomes a plea for reversal, while the statement “You can’t turn off that you’re dead / You just deal with it” in “I Have Been
Right All Along” communicates an acceptance that only this journey could bring.
While Jorgensen’s lyrics are immediately drenched in angst and whine, a closer
look at their internal narrative puts that feeling into perspective, sewing
them together to show us a boy making a serious mistake and having to cope with the consequences.
Between
the violently emotive instrumentation and the comprehensive lyrical concept, What
To Do When You Are Dead is overall a very complete record. There is no lack
of depth on this CD, of subtlety or of feeling, and I still find myself
endlessly discovering new beautiful moments within its confines. It still
baffles me that my only reason for ever picking it up was to dig for nostalgic
laughs, and further still that this record turned out to be so damned good.
Never has the bittersweet taste of eating my words been so fulfilling.
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