Two Tongues – Two Tongues

Two Tongues are a supergroup composed of members of Saves the Day and Say Anything, which means that their self-titled debut record is full of predictably whiny, emo, pop punk songs.

Now, on one level, I could dismiss Two Tongues as childish and artistically inferior to other popular music of the punk persuasion (The Arcade Fire, The Killers, etc.). And I would be right in doing so because, let’s be honest, most whiny, emo, pop punk music is obviously melodramatic and doesn’t exactly bring you new insights into the human condition.

Unless you’re a teenager.

And that’s why such a judgment based solely on traditional considerations of aesthetic excellence would be problematic in this case. Teenagers need music they can listen and relate to, just like the rest of us, and most of them just aren’t ready to experience the beautiful noise droning at the end of Wilco’s “Poor Places” or the poetry of Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” Gosh, I know I wasn’t. But I do know that when I listened to Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional (which, I’ll admit, I still do from time to time — mostly when no one is around, which, I suppose, is the proper way to listen to emo) in my early teens, the songs did resonate with what I was thinking or, perhaps more importantly, feeling at the time.

So I can’t hold lines like “Leave me/ Let me stay asleep cause I don’t care/ I won’t wait for you to believe our love is here” from “Crawl” against Two Tongues. No, they don’t make sense, but — be honest — neither did you when you were 15-years-old.

There are songs on Two Tongues, then, that are “good” in the sense that they explore the ambiguous emotionality inherent in adolescence. The obligatory thundering toms intro and razorblade reference in “Alice,” the predictable crunch-versus-melody anthem approach of “Wowee Zowee,” and the How it Feels to Be Something On era Sunny Day Real Estate guitar on “Try not to Save Me” all honestly take me back to the days when I would turn my CD Walkman up to eleven and put my head down on my desk in study hall. So I have to imagine that maybe youngsters under these circumstances today would enjoy some of Two Tongues.

But, then again, I feel like other parts of the record may be a little annoying for all ages. Two Tongues seem to enjoy going back and forth between attempts to be emotive and profound and attempts to be sunny and playful. “Silly Games,” a melodramatic song about how “she’s so far away,” for instance, is followed directly by “Don’t You Want To Come Back Home,” the band’s attempt to show their listeners that they have, in fact, listened to The Beatles and can write jangly, rollicking 6/8 numbers with inexplicable ’80s guitar solos. Of course, by the logic I have been using to defend Two Tongues from crucifixion simply on the grounds that it is an emo record, I could say that these awkward shifts from unconvincingly serious to unconvincingly playful dispositions are appropriate because they mimic the mood swings of adolescence. But, quite frankly, annoying is sometimes just annoying.

So I won’t lambaste Two Tongues simply because I can’t really relate to it at the stage of life I am currently experiencing. Several of its songs do have their place and are therefore worthwhile. But I doubt that Johnny Sixteen Year Old will find himself later in life having a conversation about how he played Two Tongues over and over again in the car that summer he got his license. After all, it’s no Diary or The Places You Have Come to Fear The Most. There are classics and letdowns for all seasons, I suppose.

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Tagged as: pop punk