What does "emo" mean, really? It's a surprisingly contentious subject for a lot of people, and there's a lot of flexibility in the way in which people use the term that enables it to encompass a lot of very good music as well as a lot of very crappy music. When I tell people that I've been getting into a lot of emo stuff lately, and they ask, "You mean, like, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, right?", I usually take that as a queue to stop talking about emo music and to start talking about how Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco really did have some good moments, notwithstanding the fact that I really dislike Fall Out Boy's newer output. Regardless though, all those missed opportunities have really given me an itch to talk about the emo music that I like the most, which is the punkier '90's version of emo music. Let me admit that the boundaries are somewhat thin between this sort of music and the newer, scene-inspired emo of the 21st Century. I mean, every emo band is prone to oversensitivity at times - Mineral especially - and even the always cool Jawbreaker were prone to writing a sickeningly saccharine song like "Million" when it came down to it. In the end, what's the difference that makes it sound genuine and meaningful when Texas is the Reason's "A Jack with One Eye" includes a line like "your place is still at the heart of my everything" but makes a band like Boys Like Girls seem like such unaware poseurs? We'll try to answer these questions and more as we try to tackle Mineral's The Power of Failing, an album that, on the surface, would seem to have a lot of issues but that nevertheless pulls through with some compelling and stimulating material.
From the very first song, it's obvious what Mineral's drawing from. They've basically taken the sensitive, non-proggy bits from Sunny Day Real Estate and written a whole album around them, which is honestly just what I was looking for. "47" is a great song in its entirety, but the "swallowed whole / lose myself in you" part is the real highlight. But Mineral is really pushing things right off the bat. First there's the physical album itself. It's called The Power of Failing, goading the listener with its dubious grammatical correctness, and the title of the album is written in Comic Sans. Also, I should mention that there are definite religious undertones throughout this album, so I honestly don't know if its about romantic angst or religious piety, adding further stigma on top of the Comic Sans and the emo categorization (as much as I love emo, I always pretend I'm joking when I say that I listen to it because people always assume I listen to it ironically. Au contraire). Then we get right into "Five, Eight, and Ten," which starts with plenty of jangly emo goodness but goes and challenges us with the extremely sappy delivery of lines like "But I don't remember inviting them / to put me on this pedestal and make me feel so naked," almost asking us the question, "Are you sure this is what you're looking for?" But fear not, listener, for past lines like "And I want to know / the difference between / what sparkles and what is gold," intoned with an angst that is almost whiny in nature, we get into the meat of this album. "Five, Eight, and Ten" is definitely a rough gem, just like Mineral is in general, with a somewhat more lo-fi sound than on Sunny Day Real Estate's emo opus, Diary, but when they emerge at the end of this song, I'll be damned if I'm not pumped for more Mineral. You might say it "makes me want to try and start again," because good god, that line is delivered with some force - the same sort of force that I, completely unironically, I must shamefully admit (although, in fairness, I was pretty drunk), forced out of "Move Along" by All-American Rejects after the girl I had a crush on left a party I was at. Here, though, that desperation is right there for us to share, and it's that desperation that makes this a your-mileage-may-vary sort of album. If you want to jam out with something light and happy, Mineral's not the band for you, but if you want to hear someone sadder than you make angsty music, it's perfect. Mineral likes to live dangerously, but in this high risk-high reward game of hypersensitive emo, Mineral pulls through just at the end.
That spike at the end of "Five, Eight, and Ten" hardly lets up as we jump into the next song, probably Mineral's best known (if there is a best known Mineral song) and certainly their archetypal song - the anthemic "Gloria." The structure of this song is impeccable if predictable, and the delivery is perfect. It starts with a meek admission of failure (or failing, if you will) - "A gray morning. / Thoughts spread their wings and fly, / but I can still taste defeat on my lips" - setting the tone of this album of almost uninterrupted angst. Then everything is brought up a notch, with some frankly nonsensical lyrics delivered with just enough force to make us wonder what's next before everything bursts open with the line "I HAVE NOT YET ARRI-IVED." The rest of the lyrics in this song are so perfectly relatable, and express a welcome humility that can be hard to find in music at times. Lines like "How can I not admit? I need to know you" are just the beginning, as we get to the chorus of this song, the desperate and heartfelt line, "I just want to be something more than the mud in your eyes. / I want to be the clay in your hands." This song is like a terraced garden, building up to a brocaded peak, and what a peak it is! I sort of feel like one of the things that celebrates great emo from awful emo is the cleverness and/or sincerity of the lyrics, and with lines like "I NEED TO KNOW YOU" and that heart-breaking chorus, it doesn't get much more earnest than this. Once again, one gets the sense that Mineral really knows how to finish a song, as they pummel their way to the finish.
"Gloria" is a really powerful emotional moment, and I think following it with two somewhat more low-key songs in "Slower" and "Dolorosa" was just what this album needed. Not that these songs are necessarily low-key by objective standards - "Slower" emerges from a slower tempo into the a chorus with lines like "I spit into the wind and laugh as the words hit me in the face" - but the desperation is less overt here. I would say that these are more songs of acceptance and bargaining. "Slower" actually has quite a few compelling lines, including "people like you and me will never know the easy way" and "I swallow my pride and admit that it's not always best to understand the reasons why," and finishes with a ragged and forceful guitar solo before fading out again as we drift into the even less desperate "Dolorosa." "Dolorosa" doesn't beg for attention like the previous songs on this album. It more so glides with a sense of resignation onto the album, guitar riffs swelling and residing like the sea at high tide, always repeating the same verse before, like its predecessor, bursting into one of those urgent repeated verses that Mineral seems to be so good at. "Dolorosa" is also perhaps the most overtly religious song on the album, yet at the same time there's some sense of romantic discontent in it, which honestly makes it more relatable for me and probably for most other listeners as well. Warts and all, however, the sheer earnestness and honesty of this album pull it through. Even when they go wrong, they definitely mean well, which is good enough to keep us wanting more.
More is just what gets delivered with the nostalgia filled "80-37." I honestly have no idea what the title means, and I wish that I did. I guess 80-37=43? And Sunny Day Real Estate has songs called "47" and "48," so maybe emo bands are obsessed with numbers in the forties? I have no other ideas, but regardless this song is a bit schmaltzy but still packs enough of a punch to make it compelling. The sense of abandonment, and those lines at the end, "Things, they change, and people grow," followed by the conclusion, "They never really find the answers" is something we can all relate to on some level, and for me is the most compelling part of the song. Anecdotal imagery is similarly utilized to great effect on "If I Could," which is perhaps even more emotional than "80-37" was. The chiming guitar riff echos the imagery of that line, "I sat behind the wheel and watched the raindrops as they gathered on windshield / and raced down into the humming motor." For me, that line is so memorable, because it's something I've done whenever I'm bored during a car ride, but it's also a strangely potent metaphor for the random vicissitudes of fate.
Finally we get to perhaps the only happy song on this album, "July." Granted, it's not actually a happy song, but when compared to the rest of the songs on this album, the fact that it implies some sense of agency is quite refreshing. And hey, listen to that guitar intro! It's, like, kind of shimmery! I have no idea what the lyrics to this song mean, really, but the finale to this song is once again potent, the line "this is the last song that I should have been singing," unfortunately, sort of reminds us that this album is still the emo-est emo album that ever emo-ed, so don't get used to this mildly positive song. A shout out as well to the guitar solo at the end, which has a jolting speed to it, which goes well with the overall rawness of this album. "July" is followed by "Silver," perhaps the most forgettable song on this album, due to its somewhat slower pace. Despite the overall clichéd angst of the lyrics as well, the first line, "and happiness is just a dream, or so it seems," has a certain beauty to it. It almost sounds like something out of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Overall, this is sort of a standard track for Mineral, slowed down and drawn out a bit in order to relax us a bit after the pace of "July," so "Silver" is hardly an unwelcome presence on this album, although I'm not sure it fairs as well out of context as the rest of the songs on this album do. Next up is "Take the Picture Now," which starts with some nice, wistful imagery and some sort of twinkling guitars to start. As the energy palpably builds up before boiling over. Here I should add that I was wrong about "Dolorosa," because this song definitely has the most overt religious imagery, even using the word "redeemer" at one point. Nonetheless, it's a nice, heartfelt little song that sounds emo enough to ignore as a religious composition, and has a nice smoothness to it.
"Parking Lot" is destined to be the closer of this album, and it's honestly brilliant and every bit as good as "Gloria." First we have the most depressing lines of the album, with the juxtaposition of "I wouldn't mind if you took me in my sleep tonight" and "I know, I've got to live my life," but then we have some of the most compelling lyrics of The Power of Failing: "And realize on the way that I'm nothing more than a grain of salt in the salt of the earth," followed by that beautiful guitar swell. At the end, we get back to where we started, with that same image of nakedness and the same acute sense of failure (er... failing). A lot of more emotionally heavy albums try to be redemptive - Dog Man Star, Fantastic Planet, or This is Hardcore, for instance. The Power of Failing isn't one of those albums, but it is the perfect album for when you just want to wrap yourself in someone else's angst or scream your lungs out to some emo goodness. This is an album without the sharp wit of other emo albums like Do You Know Who You Are? or 24-hour Revenge Therapy, but it makes up for it with pure emotion and with a rawness that's missing from a lot of more recent emo music. In the end, The Power of Failing is honest and it's real, take it or leave it for what it is, but sometimes it's just what you need.
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