Album Reviews

Two Tongues :: "Two Tongues"

I’m going to start this off by committing emo/indie musical blasphemy (which I’m afraid I do quite often) and say that I’ve never been a fan of Saves The Day. There’s no real reason behind it other than I just couldn’t get into them. But the way Conley’s seemingly more feminine than usual, melodic voice contrasts with genre-defending Say Anything frontman Max Bemis’ tense, sometimes growling voice works pretty well.

The two revered frontmen of their respective emo/indie/pop/punk/what-have-you bands grabbed a band-mate each (Coby Linder, drummer for Say Anything and David Soloway, guitar for Saves The Day) and transformed into a new “experiment” called Two Tongues. The first track (“Crawl”) of the self-titled album sets the tone with a slow, soft and lightly distorted guitar riff that transforms into a raucous few seconds of screaming. The song then alternates back and forth between these two contrasting styles, perhaps to introduce the listener of the contrasting voices that merge together as one.

In “If I Could Make You Do Things”, the song starts slow as well but has that signature Say Anything bendy-guitar and lightly distorted sound while “Dead Lizard” features an almost metal riff that gives the song a heavier sound. Unlike either of these songs, “Back Against The Wall” displays the guitarists’ range when beats usually reserved for electronic instruments are played through a simple, lightly-distorted electric guitar and “Wowee Zowee” with Bemis’ chants of “Hey! Hey! Cut it out!” serves as the anthem of the album.

These few songs alone show the range of sound that this collaboration takes on while still keeping with the individual original bands’ styles and sounds. Though Say Anything’s first full-length “Baseball” was recorded on an incredibly low budget, Bemis’ talent as a songwriter shone through the bad production. The band as a whole redeemed itself with their much more successful “…Is a Real Boy” and “…Was a Real Boy”, albums that have a huge presence in Two Tongues’ debut. This hybrid’s MySpace page reads, “Sounds like: … is a real boy meets through being cool”, a statement welcomed by fans of either band’s best albums.

Two Tongues’ debut has a stripped down feel to it with no over production; just good old fashioned distortion, acoustic guitars and drums. Bemis and Conley successfully give the fans of each band what they want in implementing both of their signature sounds and song-writing skills and merging them into one. There is nothing new here; they stick to what they know.

If you love Say Anything and Saves The Day, you will love Two Tongues’ self-titled debut.

If you like one and not the other, you’ll listen to it and maybe enjoy it.

If you hate both, why are you reading this?

Because you support the Shell, that’s why!

Buy the album at our record store on Amazon

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