Despite objectively living a pretty charmed
life I was feeling kind of down today. Fortunately having no good reason to
feel sorry for yourself but feeling it anyway is exactly what this next type of
music is all about!
Disc 1285 is… The Black Parade
Year of Release: 2006
What’s up with the
Cover?
The Black Parade in full march! The cover online suggests that it should just
be the band’s skeletal marshal, and the name of the record in big slashy
graphics, but for some reason my copy has a full scene. I like mine better. The
art is fantastic as are all the fascinating characters in this disturbing
parade…with the possible exception of that bald hospital patient in the lower
center. I’m guessing he is depicting cancer (one of the song subjects) but he
looks a bit too cartoony to inspire fear and dread.
This cover also folds out – check out the full black parade in all its
glory!
If parades were this interesting, I’d probably go see them more often.
How I Came to Know
It: I didn’t know it until
yesterday; this album belongs to Sheila. I review all the albums in the
collection, though, regardless of original ownership or purchase, so here we
are.
How It Stacks Up: This is our only album by My Chemical Romance,
so it can’t stack up against anything.
Ratings: 3 stars
My Chemical Romance yearns to be sad. And if
you’re a sad listener all the better; they want you to wallow in it. When it
comes to true sadness, they fall short, but I didn’t mind because they have a
knack for writing catchy songs. I hate to disappoint the band, but …I actually had
a lot of fun.
This music is ground zero for what I think the
oughts called “emo” but rather than rely on a label, just imagine crossing
Green Day’s pop-punk frenetic jump with the Smiths life-view of the world. However,
even this is an over-simplification. My Chemical Romance was a pleasant
surprise in terms of their range and the number of influences they incorporate.
The opening track “The End” has the ponderous doom of Pink Floyd’s “The
Wall” and they drop some crunchy guitar in various other places on the record.
There is a theatrical element that lands somewhere between later Alice Cooper
and a Broadway musical. With its jumpy beat and hard-edged angry lyrics “House
of Wolves” is pure psychobilly. Despite all these influences, the record
has a remarkable musical cohesiveness.
What really ties the room together, however,
is a tapestry of songs woven from depressing topics and sad-sack characters.
This stuff is ground zero for the disaffected teens of its day. This music is
about outcasts celebrating their isolation with upbeat anthems filled with
pyrrhic rebellion.
“Welcome to the Black Parade” is the
best example, a call to arms for all the misfits, marching together, saviors of
“the broken, the beaten and the damned.” The song is catchy as hell and makes
you want to march along yourself and for 5:11 you do.
“Teenagers” is the album’s best
offering, a pop rock sing-along celebration of those six or seven years where
everything is A Big Deal. This track has a clever structure, starting with the
parents who fear those kids, and then seamlessly morphing into the realization
they fear each other as well. Teenager or not that hook they build around:
“They said all
Teenagers scare
The living shit out of me.”
Is pop gold at any age.
At the other end, you have “Cancer” a
song about…cancer. It features cheery images like “I’m just soggy from the
chemo” and the less creative “Know that I will never marry.” Despite
these maudlin, over-the-top lyrics, it features some smart production decisions
(they strip it down and let the piano and singer Gerard Way take centre stage).
It’s a good song, even if it will never hold a candle to the actual devastation
of Jason Isbell’s song on the same topic. That’s called “Elephant” if
you are brave enough to look it up.
What “the Black Parade” didn’t do was
emotionally devastate me. It just lacks emotional resonance, and for a record
in a genre called “emo” I am guessing that’s a bad thing. Maybe it is the
overwrought lyrics, or maybe it is just the precision of the band (they are so
tight they sacrifice a bit of emotion in the process) but I never slumped my
shoulders or welled up like I was supposed to. But so what. It may not be the
height of tragedy, but I had a good time sometimes that’s enough.
Best tracks: Welcome to the Black Parade, I Don’t Love You,
Cancer, Teenagers
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