I Don’t Think They Do w/ Max Bemis

It’s 3:30 in the morning on a Saturday when my phone begins to ring. Despite our previous correspondence, I am at first baffled by who would be calling this late, until I see the Texas area code. I pick up.
“Hello?”
“Is this Aaron?”
“Max?”
“Did I wake you up? Oh god, I hope you weren’t sleeping.”
As luck would have it, I was not sleeping; rather, I was entering the third act of Whiplash, furiously battling the next day’s release date from Family Video. To be fair, Bemis had warned me via Twitter that he ran “on a pretty late schedule” (most of our exchanges taking place sometime between 1 and 3 a.m.) I thought perhaps his part of Texas may have put him in a different timezone, but this does not seem to be the case when I ask him what he’s up to.
“It’s 3. I’m laying in bed with my daughter and she’s just watching her iPad, so it’s kind of daddy-daughter time. But I’ve got plenty of time to talk! She doesn’t mind.”
The impromptu interview actually works to my advantage and eliminates any phone anxiety I would’ve had dialing his phone number, to the extent that I’m wondering if I should ask more artists about spontaneous, middle-of-the-night interviews. I start by briefly describing my history with Bemis’ band, Say Anything — how “This is Fucking Ecstasy” was the first song I heard from them while shuffling my brother’s iPod, how I went on to save several paychecks in high school and college for elaborate preorder packages for records like Say Anything, Anarchy, My Dear and Hebrews, and that while other artists had invaded my periphery as I grew, Say Anything would always be the one that helped me grow the most.
“And then I Don’t Think It Is came out, and I had a very visceral reaction to that record,” I say.
“Visceral was the word I was going to use!” Bemis laughs.
For context, when Bemis surprise-released I Don’t Think It Is in February of 2016, I did not like it, and I went on to write about my distaste for the album in a since-removed review on AbsolutePunk.net. (Editor’s note: This review is no longer available because most of AbsolutePunk was wiped from the internet when Chorus.fm was launched. I was once able to track down the review in question via The Wayback Machine, but have had nonesuch luck since. Needless to say, while Bemis and I both remember the review being written as respectfully as possible, it’s final numerical score sat at a 4 out of 10. In revisiting the album to prepare for this piece, I found that my perception of the album had certainly changed in the past year and a half, but more on that later.)
I then went on to tweet something regrettably hyperbolic about the album, which Bemis found, and subsequently responded to with some light ribbing. Then, moments later, I found one of my musical idols direct messaging me on Twitter.
“You know what’s funny about that exchange,” Bemis recalls, “that I don’t think I’ve shared with you? I found that [tweet] because, you know, AbsolutePunk and I go way back. It was the first publication to seriously cover Say Anything — I think they even reviewed our first EP, Junior Varisty — so probably the same way Arcade Fire cares about Pitchfork, I kept an eye on AbsolutePunk and took a lot of what came out of there very personally. So when I first saw that review, I was like, ‘Who the fuck is this Aaron Mook guy?’ because not only did you dislike the album, but you had very well-written points, and that made it so much worse.”
We’re both laughing at this point, but I’ve known ever since that first direct message that any subsequent conversation we would have about my reaction to this album would be far from uncomfortable, especially considering Bemis’ humility and overwhelming gratitude in conversation. He thanks me nearly every time I mention his band, regardless of how positive my comments are.
“So I looked into it on Twitter and saw that you had indeed disliked the record, and I respected your writing and what you had to say, but I just had to give you a little shit for it, and then I reached out because I immediately felt bad,” Bemis laughs.
“And that tweet shook me, but in a really good way,” I explain. “It was like the bucket of blood falling on Carrie. I never thought of myself as having much of an ego, but I suddenly realized, not only do I have this platform that people read, but I have a platform that some of my favorite people — people I care about because of what their music got me through — are gonna read, and they probably think I’m an asshole!”
Bemis assures me this was never the case, and I assure him that while the review was fair game from a writer and fan who truly cared about Bemis and his band, the only reason I don’t regret the tweet in question is because of what it led to. Bemis and I originally had a brief, online version of the conversation we’re about to have — discussing our mutual love for music, the relationship between artist and writer and how critical reviews affect an artist— that really stuck with me. In fact, it stuck with me long enough that over a year later, I contacted Bemis again about being the first in a new interview series with artists, writers and press agents alike discussing the relationship between these three major industry players and whether or not album reviews have a purpose in the post-Spotify age. This is what led to Bemis calling me at 3:30 in the morning on a Saturday, and after a little more chit-chat about married life, Bemis’ vision for Say Anything and how The 1975 basically achieved that with their last record, we got down to brass tacks.
AM: In your career so far, are there any reviews that stick out to you, positive or negative? How did they make you feel at the time?
MB: Yeah, definitely. Rolling Stone wrote some really nice things about …Is a Real Boy, and I think they gave it a B+ or something. [Laughs] But, the way they talked about it, for instance, I remember them talking about Coby’s drumming, which I thought was cool. And obviously, I was so excited to be reviewed by Rolling Stone, and the fact that it wasn’t a negative review…I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve got a ways to go, maybe I’ll get an A- or whatever in the future, but this nice enough.’ And it did mention the sardonic lyrics and went further than just saying, ‘This is a pop-punk/emo band.’
And then there was a review in Spin for the self-titled record that mentioned my lyrics, and I think they used the phrase “verbal kung-fu,” which stuck with me for a long time. I remember thinking, ‘This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.’ [Laughs]
Bad reviews? I remember for Anarchy, My Dear, my producer Tim was like, ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ And he forwarded me the Grantland review of [the record], and I just read the first two lines, and it was like, ‘You can fail in a lot of ways when making a record. But it takes a lot to truly fail spectacularly.’ And then I stopped reading. It was just knowing the fact that Grantland didn’t like it — that they cared enough to write about us, but they also hated it completely and really wanted people to know about it.
So I never actually read the review, but knowing it existed was enough. It was probably the first thing I had read about [Anarchy, My Dear] critically, and even though there were people out there that totally dug it, the first thing I heard was the guy who fucking produced the record sending me this Grantland write-up that [thought the album] was just horrible.
AM: Do album reviews affect how you think about writing each record?
MB: Yeah, critical reviews affect how I write completely. It’s almost something I feel guilt for at times, that Say Anything has always been a statement involving the pillars of its community. Everything is sort of reactive, but I like that, and I’m more comfortable with that than I’ve ever been. I know what I’m going to do is going to be overanalyzed a little because it’s the kind of music that begs to be overanalyzed a little. I think a lot about what people are going to say and I want them to say nice things, so if that makes me a fraud, I am definitely a fraud. [Laughs] But, that being said, I won’t write anything that I don’t feel comes from the heart or relays some kind of genuine feeling or thought I’m having.
I’m actually kind of critical of bands who pretend not to care, when they so obviously do. I mean, there are bands like Radiohead that I can honestly say probably don’t care about what their fans think and really don’t care about critical acclaim. But then there are bands that I won’t name that I think try to give off that vibe, but thrive off of the community and what they think, or some sense of mystique or something like that, so I try to avoid that.
AM: And that sense of caring must grow over time. I remember my band’s first EP only getting one review, it was a 3 out of 5, but we were just so happy to have it reviewed at all. My bandmate once said, ‘If Pitchfork ever covered anything we recorded, even if they panned it, I would just be so grateful for the coverage,’ and I’m sure that’s true up to the point that you no longer have to ask for coverage.
MB: Absolutely, I mean I would’ve loved a 3 out of 5 from Rolling Stone for Baseball. [Laughs] I remember being on a plane shortly after the self-titled record came out. My mom called me and said, ‘Your album got a 4.5 out of 5 in Alternative Press!’ She was so excited, and I got home, flipped through the magazine, and it was actually a 3.5 out of 5. I was like, ‘Jesus, mom, you botched it!’ [Laughs] ‘It’s such a big difference. You ruined my life.’
AM: So I’m sure fan perception figures in similarly when it comes to writing and wanting people to like the next record.
MB: Yeah, I think fan perception is so important, especially for our band, you know? If you’re like…Sisqo, [Laughs] fan perception probably doesn’t matter and that’s good, that’s him. But [we’re] a band that thrives off of the people who care the most about [us]. Most of our success comes from the passion of those people and the people who so readily consume [our music]. So if you’re going to look at music as a business at all, which I try not to, it works well with art, too. I can basically say, ‘Okay, if I’m staying true to the people who really appreciate what I’m about, I [should be]doing good on a business level.’ So I’m almost forced to stay very true to myself.
If we were a different band, I probably could’ve phoned it in a few times. It’s almost like a relationship, where if you’re really honest with each other, that’s gonna be a big part of the relationship, but if you’re kind of surface level, maybe that works better for you. But when you start being very, very real with your fanbase, it sets a precedent.
AM: It must be a balancing act to think about what fans want and what your vision is for the next record.
MB: I kind of think two albums ahead sometimes, and I definitely take that into account during the writing process. …Is a Real Boy was a little bit different because no one knew who we were and sometimes you write a record to stand out. You know, ‘If someone’s listening for the first time, let’s stand out.’ But then when I wrote In Defense of the Genre, and I think “Shiksa” was the first song I wrote for that record, I went, ‘Okay, I’m not really writing for the people who have never heard our band, I’m writing for the people who want us to make a better record.’ So I think there’s something to that, to try and outdo yourself, be better. Don’t just punch up; be better.
AM: Has writing comic books affected the way you think about writing music?
MB: Oh yeah, I’m sure it’s always had some subtle effect on my writing process that I can’t really think of in terms of what I’m writing and how I verbalize it. I’ve always been a storyteller-type of songwriter so I’m sure it affects that, but mostly, I honestly think the thing I value most about being able to [write comics] and write music is that I kind of care less about what people think in terms of music because I’ve been lucky enough to have some success with comics, enough that I feel that they both exist on their own merit. People like my comics now not only because I’m in Say Anything, which is probably what it was for the first few things I wrote, and the opposite, you know? No one in the music world is going to necessarily turn to me because I write comics. So it’s nice to have two things I can kind of build my confidence on without them having to depend on each other. It’s cool because I realized that I was good at writing — or that some people think I’m good at writing — regardless of the music.
AM: Do you feel it’s more important for fans to understand your albums than to necessarily love them?
MB: You know, I want to say it’s more important that they understand the music, but in all honesty, it’s a bit of a 50/50. I think it would be really hard to be a band that is literally reviled and then 20 years later, someone is like, ‘Oh, actually, you’re awesome.’ I’m not sure how many bands are out there like that, but it’s something I hear of. I think it’s 50/50 because I definitely invest in my albums enough that I want them to be timeless, or at least something you can come back to, like you did, later on. But at the same time, when I put them out, if people stopped coming to our shows entirely and basically told me that I was a hack, I would be done. [Laughs] I do thrive off of a little positive reinforcement. So if it got to a point where there was none of that, I would probably call it a day. And then I would wait 20 years until someone realized where we were and then I’d be like, ‘Okay, now we’re getting back together,’ which is what a lot of bands are doing now. [Laughs]
AM: Someone on [Chorus.fm] was curious about the advantages and disadvantages of being on a major label, and if you would ever consider returning to one given the opportunity.
MB: You know, when we started Perma, we were talking with some random people who happened to be in the major label world, and I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t think I would return [to a major label], and it didn’t pan out [for Say Anything], but I think I could be on a major label in Perma (even though it’ll never happen) because it’s just love songs about my wife.’ So there’s no deep-seated punk rock grudge that would instantly blur out any accessibility.
That being said, especially in this age, I really don’t see a lot of benefit for a band like mine being on a major label. That’s why all of the bands that came up during our time are no longer on them. It actually seems like we may have lasted longer than a lot of those bands, and I don’t know if it’s because we came later or because they weren’t competing with us. But the trend when you looked at these punk bands is that you would sign to a major label for two or three records until they realized they couldn’t make any money off of you, or until you became Blink [182] or Green Day. [Laughs] It’s one or the other.
So with us, we appreciate our success, we’ve been blessed with a really great fanbase, but at this point, I don’t think we have the momentum that it takes to be a big pop maker. I mean, it’s hard for Justin Bieber to be the biggest act in the world, let alone us. So I don’t see much of an advantage. I see rock bands with a lot of hype that are still to this day somehow signed to major labels, and I’m flabbergasted. I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’
AM: Something that’s been particularly divisive about I Don’t Think It Is and Two Tongues Two was the lo-fi sound of the recordings. What led you to experiment with that?
MB: [Laughs] A lot of it had to do with what I was listening to. And you know what? It wasn’t so much lo-fi records as it was records [I had discovered] in college — like real indie-rock records that sounded like shit, like early Guided By Voices. But when I heard Cloud Nothings and Wavves and Japandroids, there was something about it, like it’s lo-fi, it’s obviously overblown and stuff like that, but then it’s mixed well. It’s mixed in the sense that you can hear what the person is saying and the drums are at least impactful in some way. So I feel like that’s what I wanted to do, that I wanted to have a dirtier sound but at least have it so you could hear what was going on in the song. And that spoke to me because it did kind of enable me to go a little crazier vocally. When you have a distortion effect on your vocals and you’re recording them, you have this weird experience where you don’t feel self-conscious about what you’re doing because it’s coming out and making these weird noises. It’s the same with guitar; when you put it through a really weird filter or some delay pedals or an old, overblown amp, it adds an entire layer of…becoming something other than what you first set out to do. It becomes something else completely without you having to do anything, and I wanted to be surprised by my own music.
I can say that we will not be continuing in that direction. [Laughs] I don’t know if that helps anyone. Maybe someday I’ll circle back to it.
AM: How do you view your relationship with the press and is there anything that bugs you about music journalism today?
MB: Sure. I like my relationship with the press a lot, especially now at this time in my life, partially because I care less about what people think but also because Say Anything no longer has to prove itself in some kind of raw or ‘just starting out’ regard. So Pitchfork can almost write nice things about us and not have to lose their cred. [Laughs] Like, Brooklyn Vegan can write an article about how Say Anything is awesome and underrated without relinquishing anything, which I think is cool, but it also sanctions my general understanding of the hypocrisy of the whole thing. There were people who liked us and thought we were cool before it was nostalgia, before the emo revival decided these things were okay again. So I’m aware of all that, but at the same time, it is nice because I’m always scared of what people think, and it feels like an organic way to encourage people to be honest about liking our band. [Laughs]
I think there are other bands like Brand New, not to pick on them at all or glorify them, that may not have gone through as much of a phase of [people saying], ‘That band is a joke,’ where as we made a record called In Defense of the Genre where I was pretty much ready to be considered a joke. We had every emo singer in the world on our record, and it was like, ‘Okay, if there’s going to be an out of fashion period for this music, I’m okay with that.’
In terms of what I think is right and wrong, I think positivity is a thing that people underappreciate because they associate it with people being fake or not being genuine with their opinion, especially in a world now where Trump is president and people are being denied rights. It’s a very fucked up time, and you should be saying what you think about that. When it comes to art…I don’t know, I really do have a hard time saying anything negative publicly about art. But I don’t think that should be a given. I think people should [feel] compelled not to say anything negative rather than forced, because that’s like totalitarian shit. But I feel like every society would understand that you going on Twitter and saying — not YOU [Laughs] — but I mean one person going on Twitter and saying something shitty isn’t going to do much except spread negativity unless it’s something that really deserves it.
The thing is, if we go and we say what we like, it’s just going to encourage people to take interest in those things, but if we don’t mention it at all, it doesn’t really get publicity and it has the same reaction, the opposite reaction where people aren’t really talking about it and people aren’t compelled to be drawn to it. So I think it happens naturally and I don’t think it has to be so obvious in terms of, ‘I hate this’ [or] ‘I love this.’ It could just be, ‘I’m interested in this, so I’m going to draw attention to something that compels me to invest further.’
So that’s my one thing. I’m an anarchist, and I always reassert that because I do think we should have the freedom to do whatever we want, but they day we decide not to kill each other and do terrible things as a society because we understand that it’s wrong, to me that’s a glorious day as opposed to one where we’re being held at gunpoint being told not to do something. So that kind of translates into how I appreciate art. I just want it to be a natural phenomenon as opposed to, ‘These people are telling us what to listen to or what not to listen to.’
AM: People used to read album reviews to help them determine what records to buy, but in the post-streaming world, we have the option of hearing almost any record, instantly and virtually free. So the big question that I’m working towards is, in your opinion, do album reviews still have a purpose in 2017? If so, what do you think that might be?
MB: Yeah. I think album reviews and art criticism absolutely have a purpose. It keeps us from reaching that [point in] life where we kind of sit cross-legged and let imagery and music pass by our periphery and sidelines without saying anything and just kind of look at each other [smiling]. So I think especially right now, [those things] serve a purpose.
But for me as a consumer, I know that the purpose is not necessarily what everyone intends. For instance, there’s this guy I really like, Ian Cohen. And I just refused to read Pitchfork because everything I read literally made me want to punch somebody in the fucking face. And then I read Ian’s review of the Balance and Composure record, [The Things We Think We’re Missing], and it wasn’t even a positive review, but the way he spoke about it made me want to listen to that record. He was like, ‘You know, I had some people walking by me at Pitchfork asking what the fuck it was,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s good. I’m gonna put that on the positive side.’ [Laughs] But he’s like, ‘It reminds me of Deftones, and there’s this adolescence and angst to it,’ and I’m like, ‘Check, another positive.’ And even though universally, it didn’t get as good of reviews as the new Kanye, I was like, ‘Okay, this is actually what I’m looking for.’ So it’s the fact that Ian took the time to write that even though it wasn’t a stellar review. For me, I wouldn’t have discovered them and I wouldn’t have discovered a lot of the the bands I discovered through them.
So I do think, because of the honesty, there is a purpose. I just think we should also be a little more aware of the context of everything. So even if you don’t like something, just talk about why it’s just you that doesn’t like it. I’d love to see that much personality in music journalism. ‘I don’t like this because my father didn’t love me.’ If you’re going to serve up your own personal opinion, let me know why you in particular feel that way rather than thinking, ‘Objectively, this is how it is.’
AM: Speaking of Kanye, just because you’ve written about meeting him and playing Say Anything for him — I’m a huge Kanye West fan (I recently presented my senior thesis on Modern Hip-Hop and Philosophy, analyzing him, Chance the Rapper and Kendrick Lamar through Kierkegaard’s Hierarchy of Stages), so I wanted to ask what your favorite Kanye album was and why? And just because I love asking artists I love about the artists they love, what’s your favorite Saves the Day album and why?
MB: Oh man, yeah, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy for Kanye because it’s the album that got me into him. I used to listen to underground hip-hop back in the day, like A Tribe Called Quest and stuff like that, but when I first heard Kanye, I kind of thought, ‘Okay, so he’s kind of like a more mainstream version of Q-Tip’ or something like that. Like, ‘It’s playful, it’s cute, I like it,’ but then he got big and his reaction to that was really dark. And I was like, ‘Okay, dude, now you know what it’s like,’ like he’s no longer just this fresh-faced dude and he’s not afraid to say literally anything. And I respected that so much because he could’ve just kept trying to be a huge pop star after he blew up, but he was like, ‘No, I’m not happy as a person and I’m going to constantly talk about that,’ which I obviously respect.
And then for Saves the Day, that’s a tough one, but I’m probably going to go with Through Being Cool. It changed my life completely and made me want to be in a band. As much as I think Stay What You Are is probably their best record technically and their most well-written, Through Being Cool is the one I’d bring to a desert island because it’s really nuanced. There’s content there, there’s a lot going on, a lot of weird parts and it’s a very emotional record. So I would go with Through Being Cool.
AM: That’s the bulk of what I’ve got. What’s in the cards for you over the next year or so?
MB: We are recording a new record in October with Will Yip, and it’s certainly another record that’s going to be divisive, but I think if people like the dark element of …Is a Real Boy, the tragic element to it, [this is] a tragic record and it’s very heartfelt. We’re also going on tour pretty soon, and I can say that it’s going to be more than just a random tour. There will be a certain special something about it in terms of what it is and what we’re playing. And then I’m going to be making another Perma record sometime next year. And a lot of comic stuff. So yeah, it’s always something. [Laughs]
