- Release date:
- October 23, 2007
- Artist/Band name:
- Say Anything
- Record label:
- J Records
- Official Web Site:
- http://www.sayanythingmusic.com/
- Overall User Rating:
-
(0 ratings)
Why you should care: Troubled artists are more fun! Bemis may have lofty pretensions (27 songs about your state of mind, Max?), but he’s also witty, musically gifted and provocative (witness the big singalong “Died a Jew”). But his mocking tone, new electro-pop sensibilities and clever use of guest stars (“Church Channel,” featuring Paramore’s Haylie Williams, is a wonderful boy-girl back-and-forth about falling in love while institutionalized) makes “Defense” one of the year’s most challenging—and fun—records.
Verdict: Too long, way over-the-top, excessively self-absorbed…and, yet, also daring, catchy and off-beat. Consider it the snide, middle-finger response to other ambitious double albums like “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” or “Stadium Arcadium”…but better, too.
X-Factor: Bemis’s guilt-ridden Judiasm. His last album featured a hit song about “what my rabbi taught me in the old shul,” as well as a Holocaust sex romp. On “Defense,” he salutes his non-tribe love interest (“Shiksa (Girlfriend)”) and confesses to a lapse in Orthodox eating habits (“and yes, I chase my milk with ham/although we broke our promised land”).
