Two Tongues - Two Tongues

Saves The Day and Say Anything are two of the alternative rock scene's most respected bands, the first almost being genre veterans whereas the second form the replacement with at the procession's head their tortured and charismatic frontman, Max Bemis. On the face of it, normal that the ladder worships his predecessor Chris Conley, talented songwriter of Saves The Day. More surprising is the friendship between those two modern times icons. It's Bemis's adoration for Conley that is at its heart. Their first collaboration dates from 2006 on the occasion of a cover album tribute to Bob Dylan released by the label Doghouse, ‘Paupers, peasants, princes and kings’. A common tour followed between both of their bands, enabling Bemis to move from the status of absolute fan to that of Conley's close friend. When the first one put forward the idea of more thorough collaboration, it wasn't long before the other one answered that "he would do it with no one else". The result has been waited more than impatiently by the scene's aficionados and regrettably it is not as we dreamt it.

This result, it's Two Tongues: Max Bemis and Chris Conley on vocals, guitar, keyboard and lyrics, Dave Soloway (ex-Saves The Day for a few weeks) on the bass and Coby Linder (Say Anything) on the drums. It's normal to expect the best with such a line-up, especially on words and vocals, Chris's high-pitched voice having remarkably proved itself once associated to Max's one, hoarse and resonant, on Say Anything's song 'Sorry dudes, my bad’ two years ago. This contrasted and tasty vocal alliance bears its best fruit on the beginning of the record. The first seconds of 'Crawl' and its booming chorus reminiscent of the ones from ‘In defense of the genre’ only suggest the best. ‘If I could make you do things’, more rock, rather approaches Saves The Day and the back-and-forth between Chris's almost feminine singing and Max's wild one offers a great rhythm to the whole. ‘Dead lizard’ is also very successful, its guitar riffs a la ‘Sound the alarm’ reminding a pop ‘The artist in the ambulance’ (Thrice).
This excellent chain of poppy and upbeat tracks is disrupted by an interlude sung by Eisley's Sherri DuPree (Max Bemis's wife-to-be and who also made the album's cover) to install a much darker atmosphere. It's not straightaway annoying, ‘Tremors’ being in the vein of ‘In defense of the genre’ 's ballads. Some will find the song insipid and its vocals too whiny, but it is yet very efficient. However, the following songs' level is way below that of the record's beginning and are unfortunately far from being memorable. The high hopes brought by the first part of the album make the second a real disappointment. Several of them are definitely boring and seriously lack energy. The cheerful ‘Come on’ certainly has rhythm but terribly repeats itself, the duo's vocals on the awkward ‘Alice’ lack enthusiasm and ‘Try not to save me’ sounds like an average Saves The Day b-side.
‘Back against the wall’ embodies all the frustration felt when listening to this record. It could and should have been one of the best of the year, the creative potential of its two phenomenous songwriters being so huge. And yet, whereas we're waiting for Bemis and Conley to show their superiority over the rest of the scene and to definitely establish themselves as today's alternative rock kings, they rather choose to serve us an oddly funk song with ugly synth sounds and a main guitar/bass riff completely dated. It's dull to death and the chorus is as empty as a circle pit at a Jonas Brothers show. We would like to shake them and ask them to be serious two minutes: you can do so much better than that, guys! The whole record is very uptempo rock, with sequences reminding sometimes The Replacements and Minutemen, sometimes Hüsker Dü and Fugazi. ‘Don’t you want to come home’ really sounds 90's rock, just like the majority of the riffs on the album being more in line with ten years ago's alt-rock than with that of today, closer to The Hold Steady than to Taking Back Sunday. Conley's voice already being on the verge of the unlistenable for those who don't appreciate his high-pitched timbre, the effects on his voice on the verses make them hardly supportable. The album's very end is even more disappointing, the last song being a weak and useless cover of the band Ween where Bemis seems totally out of place, a really bad way to end the record. The exception in this decadence is the very well-executed ‘Wowee zowee’ with its catchy power chords, its rumbling bass and its excellent chorus calling for sing-along, delicious back-and-forth between Bemis's low barkings and Conley's high whines.

So we finish the listening of this first self-titled album (the quartet maintained that Two Tongues would last more than one record) with a slight bitterness and a certain disappointment. Some elements that we were waiting for at the announcement of such a collaboration are yet here: the vocal tandem Bemis/Conley works perfectly, it's a pleasure to listen to the sharp contrast between the two singers. Whether they play the same character ('Try not to save me') or, more generally, they speak to each other as lovers ('Zowee wowee') or friends ('Silly game'), Chris's mellifluous voice and Max's powerful one go together wonderfully well. We are on the other hand sometimes surprised to hear the latter and his deep voice that we know singing narcissistic and tormended anthems recite us much more impersonal, not to say hackneyed lyrics. This is one of the most disappointing aspects of the record: whereas Say Anything and Saves The Day lyrically excel, Two Tongues content themselves with surprisingly banal lyrics. We recognize the two bands' touch on the musical level though, Conley and Soloway bringing the darker side of their band, Bemis and Linder the more raw rock of theirs. The partners had announced it, we had not to expect a mix of '...Is a real boy' and 'Through being cool' but rather " 'In defense of the genre' meets 'Sound the alarm' ". But this encounter fails on the second part of the record which is desperately short of energy and the album seems to have been made too fast, its initial release having though been set to last summer. Half of the songs would have been enough to make a very good EP that would have been way better received by the critics.
'Two Tongues' isn't for all that bad, far from it, it's a good record for itself, a solid debut for any unknown band, but a slight cold shower for all those who were hoping for a masterpiece level with its creators' reputation. "All-star bands" always end up being in the shadow of their founders' initial bands and Two Tongues won't be an exception. This album doesn't manage to draw up the quartet to an equivalent level to that of Saves The Day and Say Anything, only looking like a simple side-project in comparison with those ones. Thus, it will be no more and no less than a nice interlude to make fans wait until the new albums of the two genre's heavyweights.

3.5/5

Recommanded if you like:
Say Anything, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids
Check also:
The Stereo, Person L, Forgive Durden

www.myspace.com/twotonguesrock
(Vagrant Records, 2009)