Emery Rediscovered

I used to be a huge Emery fan, ranking them probably at number 3 or 4 in my top five bands. Their CD "The Question" is still incredible, featuring fantastic songs like this one:

"The Question" is a complete album -- from start to finish it just feels solid -- and these are my favorite albums to listen to. Another example of what I'd call a "complete" album is House of Heroes' "The End is Not the End." Check that one out...it'll blow your mind.

Emery followed up "The Question" with "I'm Only a Man," which dealt a lot with struggles men of my parent's generation go through. I'm not exactly sure what Emery was saying with that album (sometimes it seems they excuse a lot of the failures that that generation is becoming known for), but it still got me through a tough time where I became disillusioned with my father's generation. Maybe that's why I like the album so much...good stories that are relevant to life.

But then they released an EP and an album that were less than spectacular, and certainly not "complete." Emery fell back in my rankings and I kind of gave up on them. They also recently released another album that felt similar -- as if they traded in the creativity that once defined them for a heavier sound, which doesn't make up for it if you ask me.

It sucks when bands get worse, doesn't it?

But as I enter the realm of MP3's (I'm kind of late on that one), I listen to entire albums less, and more just whatever song my MP3 player chooses at random. This has its purposes, but don't ever stop listening to full albums because then you miss songs like this, which is actually two songs juxtaposed to each other:

That's from their first not-that-good album. Isn't it a great song though? I realized, that Emery is still good and writing really good songs, but they just don't fit together as a cohesive album like they used to.

Here's one that struck me from their newest album:

So the lesson is...listen to Emery! All of it at random and in order.