After Alyssa‘s polite insisting, I’ve been listening to the latest musical offering from former DC Comics intern, Gerard Way. His band is, of course, My Chemical Romance. They’ve been accused time and time again of being emo-this and emo-that. Frankly, I don’t know what emo is supposed to really be, particularly since emo used to mean one-man milksop-angst groups like Dashboard Confessional. If that’s emo, then I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t like this. A whole lot. The Black Parade is dark, epic, imaginative, bombastic and unabashedly derivative of something, but I just can’t put my finger on the specific source. Alyssa says they sound like Queen. Sure they do, but there’s other stuff in there. Like original-recipe Yes, the early stuff around Going For The One that was packed with multi-tracked choral breaks all bookended with Rick Wakeman’s keyboard and Steve Howe’s guitar. Mr Way likes The Beatles, too. And Faith No More. But there’s a heaping helping of straight-up glam-metal in this mix. They make sounds that wouldn’t be out of place on an ’80s hard rock compilation. And why does the production make me think about American Idiot? Oh, yeah. Because both this album and Green Day’s recent magnum opus were produced by the same fellow: Rob Cavallo.
But I’m still missing something. There is a specific wellspring of inspiration in there. I’ll think of it eventually.
I didn’t mention Mr Way’s nascent comicbook connection for nothing. Using his celebrity for leverage, he’s getting back into the game with his own series for Dark Horse called The Umbrella Academy. Could be good. Could be just so-so. He does list Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison as influences, so here’s hoping his heart is in the right place.
Besides, I don’t think he’s quitting his day-job anytime soon.
