What it is to Burn- Finch

If someone handed me a bag full of emo CD's, I would hand it right back. Why? Because it's not my bag. I really don't understand men who wear women's pants and makeup and scream at the top of their lungs about how sad everything is. It's like they heard Pinkerton and thought that Rivers Cuomo never got over how sad everything is and never eventually wrote an unironic (though it wasn't taken that way) song about how he wished he was a part of the stuff-shirt Beverly Hills scene. Now he's married with kids and his twitter feed seems to indicate that he's a generally happy dude. And yet the emo kids keep crying and cutting as if there were nothing else in life. So much emo doesn't reach beyond the perceived misery that accompanies the high school experience of every red-blooded American (and possibly the blue-bloods as well).

Anyway, despite the massive head-scratch I offer to the emo community, What it is to Burn by Finch is a proud part of my music library. Why? Because it transcends the cliches of its genre. Sure, the very name What it is to Burn seems annoyingly emo-ish and yet I assure you that the music on this particular platter is of the highest quality to be found in the genre. The songs rock harder than just about anything else in the Drive-Thru Records stable, and every song reaches to be anthemic. Not all of the songs succeed in their aim, but the majority of them get there. Oddly enough, the best track on the album is the title track which appears as a bonus(?!) at the end of the album. It's good  enough to be the album opener and yet it isn't. If you're looking to add some emo to your life, you could do much much much worse than What it is to Burn.