Saves the Day
The Glass House
9/4/13
Why is it that any good emo band from the '90s broke up soon after their pinnacle of success? Probably because no one wants to be a middle-aged man singing about problems from the narrow viewpoint of a teenager.
What little relevance bands like Dashboard Confessional, Brand New, or Taking Back Sunday held during their career was in the hands of a notably younger audience. Saves the Day seems to be a grandfather to these bands, paving the way for the commercialization of the genre.
Saves the Day, barely making the cut off with their debut album in 1999 had a career during an odd point in the emo timeline. They're not quite considered to be part of the '90s emo heyday of second wave, but more often associated with the 2000's era artists that drove emo over the edge, losing any resemblance to what the genre was founded on.
See also: Top Five Saves the Day Music Videos
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That said, Saves the Day front man Chris Conley should probably take cues from bands like American Football and move on with a music career away from the project that made him famous and stop making albums that depend on a fandom he achieved fresh out of high school. Instead he should put his talent into a new project, following the careers of Blake Schwarzenbach, or Mike Kinsella.
Oddly enough, opening act Into It. Over It. was able to capture the essence of what a Saves the Day show probably felt in the early 2000s at last night at the Glass House. On tour with a full band, Evan Weiss was joking around and telling stories between songs, but emotionally connected and full of energy during the performance. However, Weiss should probably stick to playing his shows in his normal acoustic format since his most popular tracks are not with a full band, at least he didn't try to reinterpret them as a full band. Into It. Over It. stuck to a set list of songs Weiss previously recorded with a full band, and songs he couldn't play without a band.
When Saves the Day came out onstage the building flooded with people. What was empty for the first two openers now was packed to the edges.
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For their second song, Saves the Day chose “Shoulder to the Wheel,” a song from their sophomore album, and the epitome of what was wrong with this show. Conley walked around onstage lacking energy, playing the song with the kind of lack luster energy you would expect from someone whose been playing the same song for over 10 years. He seemed to have outgrown the subject matter and was bored. The crowd was filled with energy when the band would play their older songs. With their new material, not so much.
As the show went on it only became more apparent that for Conley to put out an album that will be as successful as Stay What You Are once was, he would have to do it under another name. Not only helping the expansion that all bands need to stay relevant, but restoring the credibility lost in the Dark Ages of emo.
In the traditional trajectory of apparent success in emo is concerned, maybe the breakups of bands are not only helpful to crystallize our emotional connection to them, but maybe adds to the satisfaction of what emo means. If wallowing in your feelings is what you want, then maybe the despair of your favorite band breaking up makes it all that much better.
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