The Get Up Kids make the list. Wonder what they did? Jackie Robinson is on the list too, I hope they don’t meed the old Brooklyn Dodgers player. He had enough to put up with without incurring the wrath of the Vida Blue.
If you haven’t heard this record yet, then you don’t know what you are missing. Or if you have heard it, and don’t really rate it, fair enough. But I think this was the second best LP of 2001. Damn me for not reviewing it yet. The VB, like Yaphet Kotto, are doing new things with emo. And they do it so ridiculously well as to make me want to yell about how awesome they are. I mean, their last LP was brilliant enough as it is, but they came a long and made one even better? There’s no accounting for quality. It’s all about the vocal assault – spoken, crying, screamed, shouted, agonised. Dual. One then the other. Reduce you to rubble. The music is entirely original, the closest I can get is to compare them to Native Nod spazzing out to the Nth degree. Emo grooves spliced into gloriously spastic melodies. I can not believe how perfectly this fits in with the music I enjoy. Roll on the floor and dirty your thrift store shirt. Put badges and patches on your bag. Grow a beard. It’s just impossible to keep track of where this band goes on this release. It is simply brilliant, from start to finish. They even had time to get song titles like “Never let your girlfriend go camping with that guy she met in pottery class… trust me”. Hmm, VB have a rather strange habit of making their lyrics not follow what’s written on the insert, but never mind. The ones written down are just sheer brilliance.
Along with Yaphet Kotto, the Vida Blue deserve to be the classic emo band that retro-kids will be desperately hunting for in 4 years time. The Indian Summer of 2007. And yeah, I am so cool cos I have all the early stuff too. You’ll have to prize my fingers out of their rigor mortis to let go of them. Be still my emo heart.