The Promise Ring didn’t write the book on emo; they just named it. One has to assume Nothing Feels Good graces the cover of Andy Greenwald’s genre exegesis, subtitled "Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo", partially because of its title: Greenwald takes us to the LiveJournal era and beyond, so "nothing feels good" speaks both to the performative oversharing and theatrical sadness most have associated with emo as well as the self-deprecation and guilt that is assumed of its fans. But even after 18 years, there’s no way anyone can listen to the Promise Ring’s landmark second LP and feel as if it’s an endorsement or cause of anhedonia; it’s one of the most effective cures.
The world of Nothing Feels Good doesn't pinpoint specific, identifiable emotions. It is a state of being, one where an overactive mind and overstimulated body are aren’t exactly at war, but struggling to attain common ground. It’s feeling like your heart is pumping Mountain Dew straight to your brain and your central nervous system can’t be trusted. Davey von Bohlen himself is at a loss for words to describe it: many of Nothing Feels Good’s inscrutable, quotable lyrics are a result of internal miscommunication: "I got my hands on the one hand, and I don’t know where to put them", "I married a room, where I’ll at least keep my hands in order", "how do I explain your body to the rest of my day?"
The Promise Ring were in their very early twenties in 1997, when Nothing Feels Good was released. They retained the urgency and velocity of their rawer, punkier debut 30° Everywhere (also being reissued), matching it to the nervous energy of an entire freshman dorm at a midwestern public university on a Friday night. The Promise Ring can barely contain themselves here, their biggest difference from von Bohlen's previous band Cap’n Jazz, who didn't even try. This touch of restraint amidst chaos makes the Promise Ring a quintessential emo band, and it's the rhythm section that sets them apart from proper indie rock. Compare Nothing Feels Good to the predominant bands of the era—Yo La Tengo, Built to Spill, Pavement, and Belle and Sebastian weren’t exactly known for their exuberance, earnest embrace of pop or crisp musicianship, and while Sleater-Kinney and Fugazi were the only two bands with tighter rhythm sections, their concerns were far different than those of the Promise Ring. This was "college rock" but with a different set of reference points: Imagine if Fugazi’s "Do You Like Me?" were written from the mindset of "Call Me Maybe".
And so when skeptics conflate the Promise Ring with more pop-punk oriented peers like Saves the Day or the Get Up Kids, drummer Dan Didier and bassist Scott Beschta (sorely missed on subsequent LPs) are the best counterargument. "Is This Thing On?" starts Nothing Feels Good in a full sprint and from that point forward, Didier rarely repeats himself for more than four bars, filling every moment with syncopations, triplet fills, or double-time cymbal crashes. Beschta likewise forgoes indie's preferred thumbing of simple root notes, treating bass as an active melodic and rhythmic participant. It’s not music you can really dance to, but it encourages extroversion and restless giddiness just the same.
The sheer likability of Nothing Feels Good may result in its slightly underrated status—it lacks the mythic aura of Cap’n Jazz, isn’t granted the same hushed reverence of Diary, nor is it as currently influential as American Football, passionately defended as The Power of Failing, or as expansive and progressive as Clarity. But it's still subtly innovative—the unconventional song structures showed emo could become pop without verses and choruses, while their open-C tunings lent a warm beauty to even the friskiest songs.
More importantly, von Bohlen neutralized early emo's chest-beating with his off-key lisp and playful, poetic language, bridging the abstractions of Tim Kinsella’s Joan of Arc and Owls with Mike Kinsella’s plainspoken mash notes in American Football. Even when "emotional hardcore" was presented as an way out of its excessively aggro roots, it was still music meant to be taken very, very seriously—loud and fast and extremely earnest, not entirely concerned with melody, driven by an intense, cloth-rending yearning for spiritual deliverance. The guy at the center of Promise Ring songs is idealistic and well-read, but approachable; we come barrelling into a house party during "A Broken Tenor" and all of a sudden, one of the kitchen drinkers is quoting Sylvia Plath’s "Daddy".
Von Bohlen’s vocabulary is heavy on geographical and chromatic symbolism—he canvasses the continental United States and likes how his girlfriend looks in red, white and blue ("Red & Blue Jeans"), whereas on "B Is for Bethlehem", those colors represent flesh and blood. Conflating place and people names would soon become one of the emo's most tired cliches—the Promise Ring themselves were already guilty of it by Very Emergency ("Jersey Shore," "The Deep South"). Still, Nothing Feels Good is charged with the honest enthusiasm you feel upon discovering how much there is out there beyond your hometown, where every new city and every new person seems impossibly fascinating.
With sensations this intense, the potential for burnout is perilously high. Greenwald’s book views it as a foregone conclusion for emo bands and fans alike, and there’s a lot of evidence backing up this view—nearly all of the genre's legendary bands flamed out spectacularly, made overtly "mature" albums that were shunned by fans, or evolved into more sedate, wistful projects (including Von Bohlen’s own Maritime). "I don’t know if anything at all will be alright," von Bohlen sings on the title track, likely referring to the pressures of adulthood. But he was unfortunately prophetic: the Promise Ring would suffer a near-fatal van accident in 1999 and tried to put a happy face on things with the Botox’d power pop of Very Emergency. A year later, von Bohlen was suffering from severe migraines before a fist-sized tumor was discovered and removed from his brain, followed by an insertion of a prosthetic plate in his skull to replace an infected fragment. On the subsequent Wood/Water, the Promise Ring signed to Anti-, hired a guy who produced Smiths records, and von Bohlen wrote floral, folky songs about settling down, giving up on guitar music, and wishing he never was a singer.
Meanwhile, Nothing Feels Good sounds like the kind of record only people in their early twenties can make. The Promise Ring never did cash in during the subsequent gold rush (the closest they got was von Bohlen’s cameo on Bleed American); at least their place in the history books is literally secure. And rightfully so: from the first moment of "Is This Thing On?", Nothing Feels Good bursts with enthusiasm and nervy optimism, a tireless advocate for the thrills this style of music alone can provide.
No comments:
Post a Comment