Good songwriting doesn’t always require the absence of lyrical nonsense. Sometimes all you need is one memorable line that lends meaning to the gibberish that surrounds it. Tanner Jones of You Blew It! excels at this kind of songwriting. Take “Match & Tinder”, the first song from the Orlando emo band’s sophomore LP, Keep Doing What You’re Doing. At one point, Jones sings, “I’ll struggle to put your shoes over mine in my head and use it to piece together my confidence.” Immediately after that sentence, he adds this equally inscrutable grab-bag of nouns and verbs: “I can hardly breathe, so I’m scanning for space that lends asymmetry where I’ll put mind over matter to put this matter out of my mind.” Now, I’ve played “Match & Tinder” many, many times, because it has an addictively chunky riff and pleasurably hyperactive drumming and therefore is an excellent example of sensitive-dude melodic punk rock. But I never notice the aforementioned vocab casseroles when I’m listening. Because “Match & Tinder” (and the entirety of Keep Doing What You’re Doing) really boils down to the last line, which is kind of brilliant: “I’m having trouble trying to find the right way to say I feel less than confident.”
Keep Doing What You’re Doing is an “airing of grievances” record—Jones constantly directs his ire at an unnamed somebody who has somehow disappointed him, whether it’s the person with “habits” in “Regional Dialect” or the cretin who has given Jones “the displeasure of enduring your lack of manners” in “Rock Springs”. But the way he delivers these indignities—in a pained, shaky howl that’s constantly fighting to stay above the din of YBI!’s wondrously ringing guitars—is indicative of a guy who’s projecting his displeasure at himself onto others. Even when Jones is pointing the finger, he always sounds like the most vulnerable guy in the room. You know, typical emo stuff.
Since forming in 2009, You Blew It! have survived various lineup changes by zeroing in on the tenets of their genre like a religion. The group is not shy about proclaiming its influences—its Topshelf Records bio directly references emo O.G.s Cap’n Jazz and 00s torch-bearers Algernon Cadwallader, and says “YBI! cherrypicks from 90s emo and indie.” That’s exactly what YBI! did on its 2012 full-length debut Grow Up, Dude, where the band’s fat hooks were submerged (and occasionally torpedoed) by booming, fumbling production. If you’re 35 and grew up on Nothing Feels Good and LP2, Grow Up, Dude will make you feel 15 again. But it will also make you feel like you’re 15 if you’re actually 15. This is the difference between “retro” and “timeless”: Emo will remain eternally relevant because people of a certain age will always have trouble trying to find the right way to say I feel less than confident.