Review Summary: Come spend an hour in the asylum Say Anything is committed to.
If there’s one word that best describes
…Is Committed, it’s “unhinged.” And because of that, this is a very tough album to review. On one hand, the album is brimming with energy, and the band (more specifically, Max Bemis) has proven that they’re still capable of writing earworms. Songs like
Psyche, and (if you can believe it)
On Cum have some of the best choruses that the band has written in years. And as stated before, there’s energy and passion in each track. However, there is a glaring fault with this record that simply cannot go ignored…
The songwriting.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that
…Is Committed has some of the worst, most cringe-inducing lyrics I’ve ever heard – not just from a Say Anything album, but in general. A recurring theme present in this album is Bemis’ sexual relationship with his wife, Sherri DuPree. In fact, sex in general is a common topic in
…Is Committed’s lyrics. If you were to take a shot for each time Bemis references orgasms and/or cum, you’d be in the hospital with alcohol poisoning long before the album finishes. Thankfully not
every song is about sex, but even those that aren’t suffer from (at best) inconsistent songwriting. Bemis tends to get in his own way on this record – the two aforementioned songs,
Psyche on
On Cum are both perfect examples of this. The former ends with a slam poem-esque monologue from Bemis that doesn’t mesh well at all with the highly energetic optimism of the rest of the track, and the latter ends with a downtempo portion that features Bemis enlightening us with his thoughts on cum (hence the song title).
However, despite the songwriting criticisms, certain tracks have a certain “so bad it’s good” quality to them that I just can’t deny.
I, Vibrator’s chorus features the lines:
”I’m gonna get myself off” and
”this Jew is finna vibrate” over and over, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me chuckle a little bit – and the chorus somehow wound up stuck in my head anyway.
Thankfully there are some legitimately high-quality tracks on
…Is Committed’s. The four-song run from
Carrie & Lowell & Cody (Pendent) to
Daisy’s is quite enjoyable – and not in an ironic sense. Those four songs collectively are probably the best written on the album, and they all benefit from Bemis’ passionate vocal delivery and his ability to write infectious earworms.
The album’s final two tracks are a bit of a mixed bag however – and they’re the two longest songs on the album by far.
Woman Song is a slow-paced, emotional ballad about DuPree that features Bemis crying during certain parts. I’m not going to tell you that the song is necessarily
good because of it, but the raw emotion conveyed in the track at least feels genuine. And the song ends in a meta sort of way with a conversation between Bemis and DuPree where they discuss their thoughts on the song. In this conversation, DuPree shares her opinion that having two long songs back-to-back on the album is probably not a good idea, which I admit is funny considering the length of the album’s closer,
Fan Fiction – which isn’t a bad song, but it does admittedly go on too long. Guess Bemis should’ve listened to his wife after all.
All in all,
…Is Committed is…fine. Hell, at parts it’s great. But it’s not an album that I could ever see myself recommending to somebody that isn’t already a fan of Say Anything. Even with that being said however, I’d imagine the hypersexual songwriting and unhinged nature of the album is going to turn away many longtime fans. But you know what? I enjoyed it. There is fun to be had listening to
…Is Committed. And at the end of the day, what more can you expect from a Say Anything album in 2024?
