Album Reviews

- by Tom Dumarey

Drums kicks off  'Saves The Day' with a sense of urgency before Chris Conley joins in with the line ‘oh yeah, we’re writing a record’.  It's the opening track of the band’s first new album in five years and - according to a tweet from Conley in 2016 – 'his new favorite song of all time.

Back in the day, these former emo heartthrobs were partly responsible for introducing the scene to the masses with 1999’s ‘Through Being Cool’ and 2001’s ‘Stay What You Are’. They have since faded from the spotlight, but it never stopped Conley – the band’s sole original member- along with a revolving cast of band members from consistently releasing new material. Which brings us to ‘9’, a concept album that chronicles the band’s own story along with Conley’s personal journey through life. The fact that all this can be captured in just nine songs is quite telling.

I honestly don’t know which is worse. Songs like ‘Kerouac And Kassady’ and ‘1997,’ which are only remarkable by how utterly unremarkable they are. Single ‘Rendezvous,’ which sounds like something River Cuomo wrote on a particularly bad day and then quickly threw away. Or cringeworthy lines like ‘we wanna see at our next show’ and ‘let’s sing along another 20 years’. Lines that are meant as a thank you to the fans, but come across as desperate pleas instead.

There are 9 songs on ‘9,’ which is also Saves The Day’s 9^th album. I wish I could keep up the symbolism and come up with 9 reasons to pick this one up, but I think I’d rather go and listen to ‘Stay What You Are’ instead.

Track listing:

1. Saves The Day
2. Suzuki
3. Side By Side
4. Kerouac & Cassady
5. It's Such A Beautiful Rose
6. Rose
7. 1997
8. Rendezvous
9. 29