A Lesson in Romantics
Mayday Parade is an emo* band from Tallahassee, Florida. A Lesson in Romantics is their debut full length album on Fearless Records after releasing an EP independently in 2006. The EP did fairly well without any label support so they were snatched up rather quickly.
A Lesson In Romantics starts off with your typical emo sounding vocals on “Jamie All Over”. Seriously, I could swap in half the vocalists of this genre into this spot and it would sound the same. Even the background vocals that are provided by the bass player and drummer are very stereotypical of what you would expect. Sometimes they echo the singer, sometimes they finish off a lyric, and sometimes they provide WHOA’s and YEAH’s in the background. The music isn’t much to write home about either. I gotta admit I did enjoy the few 10 second guitar solos that were sprinkled here and there but besides that, I’m not ranting and raving about much. And even that was like I said… 10 seconds at a time.
Actual sound aside, the song titles on A Lesson In Romantics are pretty ridiculous. You can tell they purposely tried to make them long to be wacky. Titles like “If You Wanted A Song Written About You, All You Had To Do Was Ask”, “I’d Hate To Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About”, and the ridiculous “You Be The Anchor That Keeps My Feet On The Ground, I’ll Be The Wings That Keep Your Heart In The Clouds”. Not only are they extremely long on purpose but they have a chick flick feeling in them that makes me puke in my mouth a little bit.
In no way am I a fan of this genre, but I figured I would do my job and go into it with an open mind. About 5 songs in, I realized things weren’t going to get any better. I did listen through the whole album though and I stand by my opinion that’s its nothing special. You’ve heard it all before from all the other emo/alternative rock/pop punk bands out there. Hell, some of them probably do it much better than these guys but honestly I can’t tell the difference.
* Whatever your description of the word emo is, I don’t care. They were classified as emo when I looked up some background information on them so I referred to them as emo. You have my permission to call them whatever you want.
