Anniversary Your Majesty

Contrary to my expectations Your Majesty is not another slab of run-of-the-mill-emo...

With Doug Boehm (GBV, Elliott Smith) and Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) at the controls, The Anniversary have evidently made a conscious effort to move away from the ever-expanding emo crowd. Perhaps they too noticed the glaring obvious fact that the genre is fast becoming stale or maybe they just got bored of stealing riffs from punk bands? Who knows? Either way it's a move that should be applauded and a move that is considerably more interesting than the end product.

Your Majesty is packed with girl-boy vocals, indie rock riffs, pop tinged melodies but it takes a hell of a lot more to make a good album than the raw ingredients. It seems like The Anniversary bought a copy of the indie rock handbook and studied it way too hard. Everything seems so deliberate and contrived. Take the atrocious lyrics "Drink mother's milk and be free" on the awfully titled Husam, Husam as an example. Are they trying to be interesting or are they trying to amuse us? I'm undecided. What is clear is that they come off looking like laughable amateurs. Like a high school Pink Floyd covers band who are proudly belting out their first original song they are truly cringe worthy.

So as I was saying Your Majesty is not another slab of run-of-the-mill-emo - it's something equally distasteful. It's a calculated, artificial take on good old-fashioned indie rock. The tunes are here, but the feeling is most definitely not.