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 wonder how much of this is them trying to shake off the 'negative' things about the scene they became part of and how much of this is Warner desperately trying to re-brand them before all the kids move onto something else like Disco Ballroom Opera.

I wondered this too... what I see a lot of, under the surface, is discourse about masculinity. The beating up of emos, and the dismissal of old MCR as "whiny", is this magazine and the closed-minded general public saying that the only valid way to be a guy is to be macho. Emotions, theatrical dress and expressiveness are for girls and/or gays. The perception that MCR are all about gothic whining is really based on the visual aspects of the band- if you listen to TBP's lyrics they are about getting through adversity, and Gerard going OMG WTF I'M FAMOUS I CAN'T COPE WITH THIS!!!. These judgements are made by people who have never listened to the music i.e. people who hate them anyway. Why are MCR/Warner trying to cater to these people? I largely suspect that this is the fault of the magazine &/or record company. Gerard wants to change because he thinks he really was giving off that message, not just that people are dumb, and they're probably sick of playing those songs which perhaps contributes to his slight dismissiveness seen in other interviews. I don't think he hates the songs, he hates the reaction people had to them. Then again it might just be me projecting because I think artists who dismiss all their past work as crap are hypocritical and I don't want to think of Gerard like that.

Even emo itself tries to compensate for this by making damn sure all the emotions in the songs are TOTALLY ABOUT GIRLS, and being pretty misogynistic in its portrayal of women as evil bitches (no comment from me as to whether MCR are emo or not, but I will note that there seems to be very little mention of women at all in their songs. All the love songs are directed towards a mysterious "you", and the only women that are specifically mentioned are Gerard's nan, his/a mother in "Mama", and "Black Mariah" who is "not right in the brain". Is this better or worse? You decide.)

Holy tl;dr, Batman! Errr, sorry I kind of saddled you with these when I don't even know you.

I largely suspect that this is the fault of the magazine &/or record company.

I sort of think they found themselves in a position with Warner where they were like the Backstreet Boys or something. They did things like lying in press about being single when they weren't (Eliza has confirmed this, for what her word is worth). Gerard never said the songs were about 'black humour' at the time: they were about serious issues and grand themes like love and death. As far as a lot of people were concerned, they were still the band 'who really wanted to save your life' from LOTMS.

It wouldn't be unfair to say that this was making money and they wanted to get the mileage they could out of it. It's no suprise they got sick of it, but I think it's wrong to make it out like that music or that era wasn't worth anything, or that it was all 'fan' or critic misinterpretation. They spoke for that album and played the game too. If they'd wanted to 'correct' everyone they had plenty of chances to.

I really do think they have changed as people and artists and don't like a large part of the 'emo' stereotype they got included in with, but I also really think this is a tactic to make sure they don't go down with a sinking ship. The kids that once idolized them are growing up, and MCR don't want to be 'the band I listed to when I was 15'.

Edited 2009-11-28 18:43 (UTC)

... i really want some Disco Ballroom Opera. i have a mental image of the scene now and it is AMAZING.

My Chemical Romance give up emo woe

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