Taking Back Sunday – Tell All Your Friends

Taking Back Sunday are geniuses – they have created an album that everyone loves, toured extensively with bands like From Autumn to Ashes, Midtown, and Boxcar Racer, and they have really great merch (belts, binders, bags, and more)! On top of it all, Taking Back Sunday put on one amazing, energy-packed, sing-along-filled live show. If you don’t already have a copy of their debut full-length release, Tell All Your Friends, then you are seriously missing out on one of the greatest bands to land themselves a spot in the music scene today.
Tell All Your Friends is 10 tracks of angst-ridden screamo with a sonically pleasing punk-pop edge. The songs are catchy but not poppy, and the lyrics speak to anyone who has ever had a relationship, a friend, or a family. In other words, everyone will identify with the lyrics. Take for example this verse from “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team)”: “Hoping for the best just hoping nothing happens / A thousand clever lines unread on clever napkins / I won’t ever ask if you don’t ever tell me / I know you well enough to know you never loved me.” As if that isn’t painful enough, the song really rips into your heart at the end when the line, “Why can’t I feel anything from anyone other than you,” is repeated over and over. Show me one person who has never felt this way before and I will never write another review again. Taking Back Sunday’s lyrics are self-deprecating and self-conscious, but they are what every human being feels at some point in their life. Each line is sung (or screamed) with precision and pain from the alternating voices of Adam Lazarra and Shaun Cooper.
Taking Back Sunday started out as a small band from long Island, NY that no one had heard of. But with the aforementioned tours, exposure on MTV2, and plenty of word of mouth, Taking Back Sunday are gradually taking over the emo-core music scene. From feeling fortunate enough to play to a group of 30 kids, Taking Back Sunday are now selling out concerts all across Canada and the United States. There is definitely a buzz about the band, and it doesn’t look like it will die down any time soon.
With all that being said, I can safely say that you will like Taking Back Sunday and you will not regret buying Tell All Your Friends. This album will never win a Grammy award – it probably won’t even win an MTV award – but that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the best albums of the year. There is no doubt that Taking Back Sunday will go down in emo history as one of the greatest bands of our generation.