Back On Track - Say Anything

“It’s fine for me to hear people say ‘have you heard about that band where the guy’s a bit crazy?’ I don’t take it to heart, it’s true.” Say Anything front-man Max Bemis has been through a ****ing lot. Thus it is no great surprise their latest album is a mammoth 27 tracks long. Few artists rely so heavily on the escape and emotional outlet the avenue of creating music can provide. To vent his frustrations and declare his deepest thoughts literally keeps Bemis sane. Following a frightening breakdown while recording previous album ‘Is A Real Boy’, Bemis was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His life and, more accurately, his lifestyle had to dramatically change. “It’s something that I’ve been dealing with for about four or five years now. It’s a condition where you can become delusional at worst and at best you’re just going to have to live your life with things a little bit more up and down.” revealed Bemis. “It’s easier to get depressed. It’s basically impossible to do drugs as it becomes more than just a trip.”

“If I didn’t sing about it, I really don’t know what I’d be doing,” he confesses to Gigwise backstage at Manchester Academy. We find ourselves in a dank portakabin devoid of any history or character due to the refurbishments been carried out on Academy One. Bemis swigs from a bottle of straight tequila then proceeds to wash it down with a Red Bull chaser. By which Gigwise swiftly draws a big line through the ‘are you still tee-total’ question previously prepared. His hands are visibly shaking and his stubble coated face is drawn. “We are pretty worn down both emotionally and physically” Bemis admits. “We hadn’t been on tour for awhile due to us recording this record”.

23-year-old Bemis is such a beguiling front-man. Performing he is confident, bordering on cocky, as he delivers his viciously sharp lyrics captivating every onlooker with such ease. But away from the stage he is reserved and slightly guarded. He certainly isn’t rude or unresponsive, but you are left deeply aware of how much he thinks about literally everything. His answers are lengthy, well-articulated and thoroughly thought-through. Say Anything is undoubtedly his baby, but he is diplomatic about the notion that the band is simply Max Bemis. “It depends on how you look at it, if you are talking about the song writing process then it is basically me.” He admits “But then there are so many other layers to the whole thing. There’s what happens after I write the basic songs which is that Alex and Coby take it and make it a Say Anything song. Then there’s the live experience, which again couldn’t exist without the other people. Usually I talk for the band so it’s understandable why people think that way”.

But control is vital for Bemis to fully succeed in his mission. The deeply personal songs simply have to sound perfect and the only way he feels this can be achieved is to do it all himself. “I did all the guitars on the record.” He states “It’s not all about control, well in a sense it is, I guess its how you look at the word ‘control’. I don’t get off on the power. It’s a case that I’m not the best player technically and sometimes I do things accidently or just in my own particular style that people just can’t duplicate. I hear songs in my head and I need them to come out the way I hear them in my head.” The result is a quite breath-taking work of art. ‘In Defense Of The Genre’ is littered with punk-rock gems that have a greater depth and soul than many of his peers work. The invention and sheer creativity to produce 27 songs in which every single one excites and enthrals deserves a hell of a lot of respect. But some quarters seem to have missed the point completely. Bemis and Say Anything have been branded ‘sell-outs’ for delving into the ‘poppier’ end of the punk-rock spectrum. A grand statement that when in the presence of someone who visibly cares so deeply about his work in which, no question, comes straight from his heart, is absolute bollocks.

Bemis is philosophical about such allegations: “For me I would compare it to walking into a bar and you see an attractive girl. You talk to her but you get rejected. That experience doesn’t define me. It may kind of suck at the second it happens, but it’s not like its going to make me feel less of a human being in the long-run. Like when someone says ‘You’re a sell-out, we hate you now’ I don’t feel good about it at the time. But it’s not like I take it to heart. I have a strong soul. It’s not that I don’t care entirely, it’s just that I don’t care enough to base my decisions around it.”

As well as the slight change in sound, the fact Say Anything signed to a major label sadly and all too predictably invited the ‘sell-out’ slurs. But clearly coming out with a double album awash with scathingly sharp lyrics such as ‘Jesus died a Jew’ isn’t exactly the recipe for the perfect pop package. Bemis certainly didn’t envisage just how epic and vast their album was going to turn out. “I think the more concise you are the better. But in the case of this record we couldn’t be more concise. Well we could but it would be worse.” The mass collection of songs certainly caused a few issues with the record bosses, but the determination and desire for all to be heard from Bemis was crystal clear. “There were some conflicts about the length of the album. But we plead our case and said this is how we want it to be,” explains Bemis.