This Is Not An Exit: A Rambling On Saves The Day

Saves the Day has been one of my favorite bands for about nine years now. Can't Slow Down was the first of the bands material I heard, but Through Being Cool was honestly the first one I listened to. Throughout the years, this band has constantly shocked and surprised both themselves and their fans with each album.

The beautiful thing about being a Saves the Day fan lies in the fact that you never know exactly what you're going to get when you listen to a new release. Can't Slow Down catered to the bands hardcore roots (when the term hardcore didn't mean a bunch of clowns in eyeliner screaming), which gave way to a blending of that sound with pop-punk in Through Being Cool. The focus on melody drastically changed the listening experience from listening to an album that sounded look one really great song into a collection of individual tracks of honesty and teenage angst. Many fans look at this album as a fond outlet of bitterness because well, for the most part, it's a bit of a break-up/relationship issues record.

And since the band and most of their friends were in their latter teenage years when every relationship is potentially the beginning and end of the world, this album holds a lot of weight. Now that I'm older, I look back on it with nostalgia, but there's also a "man, I can't believe how melodramatic I could be" with some of the songs. In interviews, Conley has expressed the same sentiment. Still, as far as pop-punk albums on teenage angst go, this is a must have.

There were two tracks ("Sell My Old Clothes, I'm Off To Heaven" and "A Drag In D Flat") released on Vagrant Records compilations after Through Being Cool that seemed to indicate that Saves the Day was content to perfecting that particular sound. Wrong.

In July of 2001, the band released their most celebrated album, Stay What You Are. Apart from being a stunning album, the band came out with a sound from the complete opposite direction. Keep in mind, this was before the term "emo" was a household name and greatly confused with pop-punk and make-up metal bands. It also wasn't a curse word. Truth be told, "emo" at the time was pretty much the same as what is no referred to as "indie rock." Of course, music aficionados argue what both of those labels entail, but the important thing is that I can use those phrases and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Stay What You Are knocked Saves The Day fans on their asses and opened a floodgate of new fans. It was one of those albums that if someone claims they like the band and only have or heard one album, Stay What You Are is generally what they'll list (although the band's discography lends itself to having those types of fans with every album); sort of the same way people will tell you they love Green Day, but only own Dookie. With the opening "At Your Funeral," Saves The Day took listeners on a thoughtful journey with their newly developed style but fiercely remained Saves The Day. Throughout the album you could hear elements of previous ventures despite how different it sounded.

Once more, Vagrant records released a compilation a few months after the album's release with a new Saves The Day song, the stellar "Ups and Downs." Like before, this song was a progression from the previous album, but would have easily felt right at home in the track listing, leading many fans to believe that they knew where Saves The Day was going with their musical future. What came next was what many see as the band's most controversial release.

When In Reverie dropped in September of 2003, many fans were left angry and confused. What happened? This wasn't the band they fell in love with! Only that couldn't be further from the truth. It's easier to see now, but many fans did not understand In Reverie's complete departure was really just the norm for the band. I'd like to say this is what some people must have thought when Stay What You Are came out, but I really don't have enough evidence to support that as most fans I personally know began listening with that record.

In Reverie sounded nothing like any previous Saves The Day record, which, ironically, kept in pace with the band's formula. "Indie rock" as we now know it had yet to explode for many kids in their little scenes, and this strangely clever pop record confused the hell out of them. Ironically, it was perhaps their most critically acclaimed record (with good reason). DreamWorks fucked the band over and left them high and dry with the release, telling them they had made the wrong record.

Saves The Day has always been a bit ahead of their time. They put out a stellar pop-punk album (Through Being Cool), the genre explodes two years later, same with "emo" (Stay What You Are) and "indie" (In Reverie). They've always been just a bit too early with their music to gain the popularity and large scale fanfare they rightly deserved.

Which brings us to now. By now, I mean 2006 forward. Chris Conley began writing material that would become tracks from both 2006's Sound the Alarm and this year's Under the Boards merely days after the release of In Reverie, embarking on what may be their most ambitious effort yet. Beginning with Sound the Alarm, Saves the Day are creating a trilogy of albums, chronicling Conley's personal losing control of his life after the "failure of In Reverie, hitting depression hard, and then accepting things as they are and taking the second chance he's been given. Sound The Alarm was just that. A realization that something was desperately wrong while Under the Boards (which Conley calls the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy) faces the repercussions of losing control. Next year's Daybreak will complete the trilogy, which has been released very prolifically. Three albums in three years is pretty damn amazing.

With this new trilogy, the band put every single sound that has ever made Saves the Day, chucked them in a blender, and threw it at the wall. Both albums , cut from the same cloth, are so diverse in sound, that any careful fan must pick apart each track and pinpoint where each bit came from.

Most importantly, Saves the Day have always had wonderful lyrics. Conley has a poet's mind, and the songs he writes are an interesting sort of beast. The hit you, sometimes subtly, sometimes hard, but they always touch you. At the risk of sounding silly, they're lyrics you can take something from. "Relate to" isn't perhaps the best phrase. Proactive maybe. It's not just, "I'm angry/sad/whathaveyou, I'm going to listen to this song." It's, "I understand exactly where he's coming from, and this song is enabling me to tackle what I'm going through." They're encouraging lyrics in a sense in that they do not isolate the band from listener, but rather are written so that the listener can easily put his or herself into Conley's place.

It's cathartic, and often times cleansing.

With the case of Under the Boards, it's also very comforting. It's a very dark, personal album brought to life by Conley's vivid yet concise imagery. This is also year's catchiest album about wanting to die. The music and melodies are so damn infectious, that you forget the severity of the material momentarily until you realize what it is you're singing, which I think makes for a more vivid experience as just how far gone Conley felt.

In a way, this emphasizes the dark material, even making it darker in some moments. For example (and one of my favorites), in "When I'm Not There," Conley's sweetly singing a melody that wouldn't be too far off from a faster paced "At Your Funeral," but the lyrics are so seething, it pushes you back a little bit: "I thought I saw you outside my window last night/Lucky for you the shadow fled from the flashlight/Cause I love to wonder how you'll look without your teeth/The hollow smile, the two tipped tongue inside your cheek." All of this while he's crooning in a voice that sounds as if he's smiling. Definitely paints a more sinister tone. And that's the beauty of this album. It appears simple, but the more you listen to it, the longer it sets in, it's a very complex piece.

I've been personally going through some emotional hardship in my personal life, and there are a number of mainstays on rotation in my music collection by bands who always help me. But it's bands like Saves the Day, who offer a very personal, therapeutic listen; the audio equivalent of taking a fresh breath as if a weight has been lifted. That's when you know you've found something special, and through their "ups and downs" Saves The Day have never once failed to deliver an important listen.