Emo rock with a difference

Taking Back Sunday (TBS) held forth as one of the best purveyors of emo rock in the US with its first two albums Tell All Your Friends and Where You Want to Be. Created by emo heartthrob Adam Lazzara on vocals and guitar; Fred Mascherino on guitar and vocals; Eddie Reyes on guitar; Mark O’Connell on drums and Matt Rubano on bass, every song talks about heart wrenching situations and emotions run high throughout.

Now if it had not been for the music which is actually very catchy, a lot of listeners would have taken Taking Back Sunday to task for being overly melodramatic. But I love the way the music is presented though.

I like it when a rock band fuses all the mutations of the genre to create its own sound and in the case of Taking Back Sunday does this very well.

The resulting sound is emo laced with pop, punk, metal, classical and others.

More than two years since its last album, TBS is back with a third one entitled Louder Now.

Another thing I like about the band is its choice of name, and titles for its albums. Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends and Where You Want to Be are simple but original and quaintly direct to the point.

These say everything about where the group is at a certain point.

Louder Now is no different.

Despite more guitar solos and acoustic arrangements than usual, Louder Now is indeed loud.

TBS has taken nothing away from what it did previously but the emo is now in the upper decibels.

TBS has made it cool to agonize about heartbreak and these strong feelings have never been more pronounced than in Louder Now. Set against a strong definite beat, each song screams in desperation and runs on power-packed engines in search of the relief that never comes.

From the compelling intro of What’s It Feel Like to be a Ghost, down to the rutty monotone of Liar (It Takes One to Know One) to the passionate, multi-layered, My Blue Heaven up to the highly-charged Error: Operator and the raging conclusion of I’ll Let You Live, Louder Now rocks in full blast mode with predictable but engaging melodies. The other cuts are MakeDamnSure, Up Against (Blackout), Twenty Twenty Surgery, Spin, Divine Intervention and Miami.

CDs that rock

More CDs for the rockers around us: And I Feel Fine The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 by R.E.M. This is a historic compilation with a whopping 43 cuts made up of R.E.M.’s early recordings.

These include demos, remixes, live tracks, outtakes and previously unreleased versions.

Listen to get an idea of how the driving guitars, the indecipherable lyrics and the strange mix of country, folk and Brit rock became the R.E.M. we know today.

Missed Murmur but Radio Free Europe, Sitting Still, Perfect Circle, Talk About the Passion, So, Central Rain (I’m Sorry), Begin the Begine, Pretty Persuasion, Don’t Go Back to Rockville, Gardening at Night, Chinese Bros., Driver 8, Can’t Get There from Here, Finest Worksong, Feeling Gravity’s Pull, I Believe, Life and How to Live It, Cuyahoga, The One I Love, Welcome to the Occupation, Fall on Me, It’s the End of the World as We Know It, And I Feel Fine and others are all there.

Is Aerosmith the greatest rock ’n roll band in America?

Judge this for yourself by listening to the new compilation, Devil’s Got a New Disguise The Very Best of Aerosmith.

This one has only 18 cuts but the songs were very well chosen.

You might question the description of the group as the greatest but I am sure that everybody will agree that these songs are some of the best examples of commercial rock during the ’90s.

Come to think of it, Aerosmith songs do sound like they are the antecedents of the emo music we have today, much like what Taking Back Sunday makes which is now almost as loud as Aerosmith.

Tracks are Dude (Looks Like a Lady), Love in an Elevator, Livin’ on the Edge, Walk This Way performed by RUN-DMC with Steven Tyler and Joe Penny, Cryin’, Jaded, Crazy, Angel, Janie’s Got a Gun, Amazing, The Other Side, Dream On, Sweet Emotions, Falling in Love is Hard on the Knees, Pink, I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, Sedona Sunrise and Devil’s Got a New Disguise.