Saves the Day
Mercy Lounge
∙
Nashville
Sunday, November 18 at 7:30 pm CST
Concert Venue
Sunday, November 18 at 7:30 pm CST
Concert Venue
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Description
Saves The Day have been through a lot over the past two decades: Van accidents,
member changes, the emo explosion, and the adventures that carried the act and their
fans from adolescence to adulthood. But they've never had a proper history of the band...
until now. Saves The Day's ninth album 9 tells the story of the band from the perspective
of the band's founder Chris Conley and does it in a way that's as exhaustive as it is
poetic and makes the listener a part of the songwriting process. From a narrative
standpoint, 9 chronicles the epic story of a group of kids from New Jersey who realized
their dream and became international sensations. However, on a more existential level, it
shows how Conley “woke up” and became aware of his own consciousness through his
relationship with music and the unbelievable adventures it inspired since he formed the
act in 1997.
“A lot of the memories that I write about in the lyrics for this album I haven't written
about because they were too painful or complicated. But for some reason when I was
writing, my brain kept coming back to thinking about my entire career from a sense of
reflection for the first time,” Conley says of the process of writing the follow-up to
2013's Saves The Day. 9 opens with the upbeat “Saves The Day,” which serves
simultaneously as a mission statement and love letter to fans before segueing into
“Suzuki,” a song that features the opening line, “On a black and red couch playing a
burgundy Les Paul I played on Can’t Slow Down so many years ago, writing album
number nine right now.” Then again, this meta sentiment isn't so surprising coming from
someone who famously penned lines like, “You want to know who I really am, well so
do I” on the song “See You” from the landmark 2001 album, Stay What You Are.
From there the album takes you back to the earliest days of the band's history of playing
house shows on the crunchy, riff-driven “Side By Side” and drops you into what it's like
to be to on tour with your best friends when all cylinders are firing on the instantly
catchy, psychedelica-tinged “Kerouac & Cassady.” Next we move onto the band's
unplanned rise to stardom and relentless work ethic on the driving and uplifting rocker,
“It's Such A Beautiful World.” “This song is about the Through Being Cool era and
things are starting to heat up,” Conley says of the latter track, which sounds like an
unholy amalgam between Weezer and glam metal. “At this point we are flying to
performances all over the world so in the first stanza I say, 'If we get stuck on a plane,
we’re skydiving to the show.' It's such an incredible life to get to live and we were nuts
for it and enjoying every second of it.”
Unfortunately with every cataclysmic rise to fame comes the ensuing pitfalls of ego and
excess and that's what Conley tackles on “Rosé.” “That song is a bit of a dis track about
certain rock star elements that started to be displayed in the band and I was kind of
surprised that I wrote about it because it isn't something that I've thought about in a
while,” Conley says. The song also sees him approaching the vocals in a way he never
has before that unfolds itself more with each subsequent listen and is as ambitious as it is
artistic. This is followed up with “1997,” which sees Conley once again reflecting on the
band's early days over a distorted bass line and groove that's invitingly relentless and
calls to mind an emo version of Van Halen.
Finally, we arrive at “Rendezvous” and how grateful Conley is of the current lineup of
the band, which includes the virtuosic trio of guitarist Arun Bali, bassist Rodrigo Palma
and drummer Dennis Wilson, who are the band's most consistent lineup to date and take
the musicianship on 9 to stratospheric new heights. “At this point, I've actually dealt
with the conflicts and the challenges in a lifelong career in music and now I have the
guys that I could do this with forever and I'm living the dream again. Life is beautiful, so
I intentionally reference the song 'It's Such A Beautiful World' in the lyrics because that
song is about when things were going crazy for us and we were all so excited,” Conley
says of “Rendezvous” which is layered in distortion-drenched perfection. “We're
through all the reflecting and growing at this point, and we're still out here, and we're
still doing it so the timeline essentially ends with 'Rendezvous' looking into the future.”
However, it wouldn't be a Saves The Day album without a surprise twist--and in this
case it's the album's 21-minute-long climax, “29.” “The final track is seven songs in one
and it's the internal personal timeline of my entire life,” Conley explains. “It starts with
'Heartbeat' because I was hypnotized by that sound as a kid and literally it's my first
experience of waking up to life itself,” Conley explains. The finale goes on to introduce
Conley's love affair with music via “So In Love”; Saves The Day's near fatal van
accident in 2000 on “432”; and a difficult rift with a longtime friend on “Tangerine.”
“One of my main artistic passions is the fascination with how you can compose
extremely long pieces of music but also hold the attention of the listener,” Conley says –
and correspondingly “29” sounds less like prog-rock excess and more like an album
unto itself. Subsequently the movement “Victorian & 21st” recounts Conley's meeting
with a longtime partner; “Angel” is a tribute to his daughter; and the epic experiment
ends with “New Jersey,” which sees him reflecting on his relationship with his parents
and his sometimes difficult but always captivating past one last time, culminating with
the line, “I know it’ll be all right, we are alive in the world.”
Ultimately 9 is sonic evidence not only that there's a reason we are alive in the world,
but it's a miracle that Conley rightfully encourages us to celebrate.