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Saves The Day - Stay What You Are

Rating

RIYL

-

Label

Vagrant Records

Tracklist

*1. At Your Funeral
2. See You
*3. Cars & Calories
4. Certain Tragedy
5. Jukebox
6. Freakish
7. Your Ghost Takes Flight
8. Nightengale
9. All I'm Losing Is Me
10. Not An Exit
*11. Firefly

* = choice cuts

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Recent Ratings
Rick Gebhardt	Matt Birhanzel

It’s been almost 2 ½ years since Saves The Day released their last full length, Through Being Cool and I didn’t really notice that Stay What You Are came out last summer. Finally, I got my hands on it, because their last album is such an awesome record. Saves The Day keep up their tradition of intricate arrangements and emotional, passionate lyrics about heartache and adolescent pain to give the world a record that truly blew me away in its depth and complexity.

The playing on Stay What You Are is the most diverse I have ever seen from Saves The Day so far. A lot of people I know didn’t like it when it came out because it is slower and poppier in some parts and faster punk rock in others. All bands progress and mature in their playing style as they grow older and Saves The Day is no exception. "At Your Funeral" and "This is Not An Exit" are darker but are balanced with poppy hooks and "Cars and Calories" has an emo sadness to it. When I listened to "Certain Tragedy", the riffs are reminiscent of Weezer. "Nightingale" shows the most variety in playing style. It starts with experimental and ambient keyboard and has an active bass line, then back to ambient noise. Don’t worry about Saves The Day becoming too poppy, they still deliver classic emo/punk rock in the rest of their songs, except the edges are smoother and less raw.

I absolutely love the lyrics on this album. The band has gotten a lot better in their songwriting, with universal emotion and passion wrapped up in metaphors and flowing words. In true Saves The Day fashion, most of the songs focus around lost romance and heartache caused by girls. Accompanied with a wonderful harmony in the background, "See You" is about a boy where calling a girl makes him sick, and does not know his identity. "Cars and Calories" is a poignant account of what preoccupation with superficial beauty can do to a girl. "As Your Ghost Takes Flight", "All I’m Losing is Me", "Jukebox Breakdown" and "Freakish" focus on the ugly aftermath of relationships. The love songs that emo boys can use to woo their girls are "Nightingale" and "Firefly". "Firefly" tugs at my heart from personal experience.

This album was excellent. There is less punk rock on here than I would have liked, and more emo, but I’ve been listening to it a lot in the past few days. Everybody can relate to this album with its romantic idealism. This isn’t just music, this is a deep emotional experience that makes you yearn for warm summer nights of ‘grass romance’ and somebody you love whispering in your ear.