Jobie's Bite-Sized Music Reviews #34: Tell All Your Friends (album) - Taking Back Sunday
- arrangednoisefan
- Jun 16, 2022
- 2 min read
Recommended
Tell All Your Friends is a 2002 emo and emo pop album by the American rock band Taking Back Sunday. It is their first studio album. The album, and material for the album itself, has been released and re-released a couple of times throughout the years, in no small part due to its significance for the emo genre.* The sound of the album is close to the sound of Story of the Year's Page Avenue, with a healthy mix of screamed and sung vocals present on the album. Riffs and breakdowns punctuate the album, with perhaps the most recognizable being the opening notes to “Cute Without the E (Cut From The Team)”, one of the highlights of this album, as well as one of the most well-known tracks from the album. The album isn't afraid to diverge from its usually high-energy sound, however; a few tracks have slower, lower energy sections along with high-energy portions; “The Blue Channel” kicks off with a piano melody before shifting to the usual sound of the album. Speaking of screamed vocals, lead singer Adam Lazzara does an excellent job performing them on this album, with what is likely the most raw example of his vocal delivery being present on the outro of “Ghost Man On Third”, which ends the track with the line “This is what living like this does”, with a powerful scream. Lyrically, the album explores a handful of themes, such as romance, personal feuds, and semi-autobiographical introspection. The album is fairly well written, though some might have a problem with the repeated lyrics (such as the 1-2 line outros that some of the tracks have), however the lyrics are well-written enough that this isn't an issue (Lazzara's vocal delivery helps as well). My favorite tracks from Tell All Your Friends are “Bike Scene”, “Cute Without the E (Cut From The Team)” and “You're So Last Summer”. Overall, Tell All Your Friends is a great emo album from Taking Back Sunday. With its consistent quality, and its interesting sound, it's no wonder that the album is seen as one of the cornerstones of the emo genre (much like Full Collapse by Thursday, an album I've reviewed previously, is considered an important emo album). With a 20th anniversary edition released last month*, this album will likely be listened to for many more years to come.
*May 2022, for future readers.
Spotify Link:
Amazon Music link:
Apple Music link:
Comments