tothetune | My Chemical Romance give up emo woe

No more angst. No more whingeing. No more playing the victim. When My Chemical Romance re-emerge in early 2010 with their fourth album, any trace of "woe is me and it's all your fault" will be replaced by such self-aware and self-sufficient themes as "strength" and "self-preservation".

Yup, emo is dead. Long live My Chemical Romance.

"I didn't want to set kids who like to wear black back 20 years, that wasn't the point. Because it's taken us so long to be able to wear black every day."

Gerard Way lets out a laugh. The singer is standing outside Sunset Sound Studios in LA, where his band is in the final stages of mixing the new, as-yet-untitled album with producer Brendan O'Brien.

"But I guess if you're gonna dress like you listen to The Cure all the time, you're gonna get [shit] for it."

Way wasn't happy with reports that black-clad kids were getting beat up when the band played at Big Day Out in 2007. And he describes hate crimes aimed at emo kids with asymmetrical fringes that swept across Mexico in early 2008 as "a human rights issue".

"It literally didn't make any sense to me," Way says. "It all boils down to macho versus emotional at the end of the day. It comes down to gutteral, violent tendencies versus talking about your problems."

But mostly, Way wasn't happy when he thought ahead to what his daughter, Bandit Lee, born in May this year, might think when she picked up My Chemical Romance's previous album, The Black Parade, and gave it a spin as a teen. Would she see her dad and his bandmates as moaning victims?

"I didn't feel that we were," Way clarifies.

"I always felt there was a great deal of black humour with anything we were doing. But I did feel it was misperceived and misinterpreted, and in really strange ways. That's the thing though, when you put a song out there, it's no longer yours, it's somebody else's, and it's theirs to interpret however they want.

"But I knew the power the band had was whatever we put out next, so we could dictate what we were saying, we could dictate how it's perceived to a point."

My Chem 4.0, he swears, will be "very explicitly saying that we're all not victims".

Way, his bassist brother Mikey, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero and drummer Bob Bryar began pre-production on the new album in February.

"We started from absolutely zero, we didn't bring any road songs into the room," Way says.

Time is a luxury the band have never afforded themselves before, and Way says the all-the-time-we-need edict will carry over to artwork and everything else that must be done for the album.

Songs so far (though the titles may change) include Still Alive, Trans Am, Death Before Disco, The Only Hope For Me Is You, Black Dragon Fighting Society, Kiss The Ring, Boy Division and the marvellously named Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back.

Way says every track is a "first-listen song"; something that will grab you from the get-go.

"That was why it took so long, because if something wasn't making you feel that feeling, then it went away and it had to be replaced with something that did make you feel special," he says.

Australia will be first to hear the new songs when My Chemical Romance tour in February for the Soundwave festival, though the album won't be released until March.

Another thing you won't find on the new album is the conceptual pomp and the striking costumery that helped send The Black Parade to platinum status in Australia, Britain and the US.

"Let's swap the word theatrical for cinematic this time," he says. "If Black Parade was a big rock show that was full of theatricality, then this is more of a movie moment. I don't think this band will ever lose any kind of aesthetic or art to it - that always has to be there. It just means that we're not doing what we've always done; it doesn't mean there won't be anything exciting attached to this record."

Though musically shorter and sharper, Way is cautious of using the term "stripped back".

"If anything is stripped back, it's bells and whistles and marching bands and things like that. Songs are now under four minutes or maybe even shorter. That, to me, is stripping it back, trimming the fat, trimming any kind of indulgence out of the music."

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I didn't particularly like the way this article was written. It just seemed to hint at 'yo, they sucked before BUT IT WILL BE BETTER!' *cheezy thumbs up* and thats just... no.

I mean, yes, better is always... well.. better, but nothing they ever did before 'sucked'. Like, no song i've ever heard from them has 'sucked', no matter what.

And i didn't really like the steryotyping of 'woe is me' because i actually didn't percieve that at all, personally. And 'playing the victim' is kinda like... the opposite of what i got out of their former stuff... idk, was that just my mind to feel it was more like 'empowering' than 'whining and emo'?

I agree -even if the TBP is my least favorite album- that there wasn't any "woe is me" thing about it but more like the contrary. But it's also true that many people misinterpreted it. They were called 'emo' more than before, etc. So I guess they might want to try to avoid those misinterpretations.

The article was crappily written, though, no doubt about it. I bet the questions they asked Gerard used the same words as the article and he was: "Uh...I don't think it was exactly like that..." and at the same time having one more proof of how people got the wrong idea out of the album...

it wasnt my least fave, actually. most fans think that, but i think i'm different from most fans... to me its Three Cheers, then TBP, and then Bullets in order, and its not that Bullets wasn't good, but i PREFER the MORE that the others had, and its mostly not the music, but just the fact that Bullets didnt have nearly as much preparation and budgetting to record. I prefer the more layering and 'album' sound rather than the 'live' sound.

*... could have to do that i'm going on after transfer to study audio engineering, lol, the more 'studio manufactured' sound appeals to me, even if the sound is more 'rough'*

I like it rough...xD

*snorts*

And well, I'm a fan of 'live' sound also, really. So I guess that's basically why TBP is my least favorite (which doesn't mean I don't like it)It sounded too overproduced to me, too much stuff added. Anyway, my favorite is Three Cheers, it was more 'in the middle', or maybe it's just that my favorite song (Prison) is there!

Edited 2009-11-27 02:11 (UTC)

see i think thats what sets me apart from most fans of MCR... i prefer the 'over produced' sound. Like.. to me the album and live performance should sound TOTALLY different.

look at another favorite band of mine (as my icon shows), Elliot Minor... the album versions have SO much stuff that it woudln't LITERALLY be possible to perform it to sound NEARLY the same. I mean, intricate strings arrangements layered over TWO pianos, with some more electronic sounds, all layered in there and intertwined with the basic instruments...

Thats the kind of stuff i LOVE. My love of rock music is only bested by my love of classical, and with rock in order to get the feel of layering and sound twisted together and swirling around each other like an orchestra can offer, is through LOTS of digital mixing... and thats how i like an album to sound.

Now a live performance is SUPPOSED to sound rough so i LOVE that...

but i like being able to get into the song and 'see' the way the sounds weave together. Different tones and rich timbre and VERY polyphonic music... thats what i enjoy.

I understand *nods*, I know of many people who like it more that way and I guess it has a lot to do with which other music a person likes or what they search for in their music. I instead prefer just the necessary production so you can discern each instrument in the album if you want -because I'm still interested in being able to do that, but without changing their original sound much. I wanna hear the 5 of them playing without so many arrangements or added sounds. And I like it when it's not needed to take a lot more people or instrument on tour to recreate an album. There will always be some variations when played live (and I do like that -which MCR have)but I wouldn't like it that much if a song suddenly sounded empty without the arrangements (not MCR's case with TBP, but I've seen it in other bands). I liked TBP and I admire their guts for taking the risk and doing something so different, but I don't think it would work if done more than once -save for a band that was always about doing things big like, dunno, Queen (which I adore anyway)But save for some exceptions I like the more crude, direct, 5-guys-doing-their-thing kind of music.

I think MCR have released stuff to satisfy us all if you think about it! :D

see thats like the people who like 'this is how it is, here' music. MCR isn't that, but thats what i'm about to use to compare.

I like music that you can decipher. I like simple beautiful stuff too, but like... music i can sit there and not do anything but listen to it and be DOING something. Picking apart the pieces is my favorite part. When i do album reviews (nothing for real, just on my journal, lol) i have a method to listen before i review it. First listen i dont look for anything, i just hear the music on the whole. Second time around i really listen to the music, i focus on the different instruments, and how simple/complex the series is, listen for the tiny pieces that give it that extra kick. then the third listen, i find the lyrics and listen to the actual SONG, not the music. I listen to the lyrics and the emotion in the lyrics and the picture it all paints. Then one more listen to try it all out together to see how it meshes.

So to me, i dont just 'hear' the music, i really LISTEN...

And yes, MCR really does offer that very well, actually. They seem to have something for everybody.

My Chemical Romance give up emo woe

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