"Love Song Requiem" by Trading Yesterday from The Beauty and the Tragedy

Every so often on my random song searches for something to review, I'll find something surprising. In this case, it's a Christian emo band in the original "emotionally-charged" sense of emo.

Started in 2004 by David Hodges, formerly a keyboarder in Evanescence, the members of Trading Yesterday self-produced The Beauty and the Tragedy in 2004. Demand surpassed supply, so they rereleased it for exclusive selling through their website.

If "Love Song Requiem" well represents the rest of the CD, I can hear why they're popular. It's a soothing meld of piano with other echoing things in a way that actually reminds me of Enya despite the male vocals. For Christian music, it's a bit better done than most, but I still don't remember any of it after listening to the song besides the overall feel.

The vocals remind me of Jars of Clay. I wouldn't call it a Jars of Clay wannabe, but if you liked that band's first CD and its more soothing songs I suspect you'll like the sound of "Love Song Requiem".

Lyricwise, I personally find the song uncomfortably vague. The confused tone may be part of the point, since love (and infatuations) are so confusing, but it seems that for some reason he cannot have the girl he longs for. ("She belongs to fairytales that I could never be"). In the least, some line's been crossed or has been neared that shouldn't have been.

(Note that the band has recently—in August—changed their name to The Age of Information and had a bit of turnover in members and sound, as demonstrated in the EP Everything Is Broken that they released last month. Nonetheless, you can still find this song on the band's previous MySpace page.)

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Lyrics: 3/5
Music: 3/5
Vocal(s): 4/5
Overall: 7/10

"Build God, Then We'll Talk" by Panic! at the Disco from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

"What a wonderful caricature of intimacy" sings Brenden Urie caustically, and that pretty much sums up what I've heard of the band: caustic, and not afraid to use coarse language to make their point. Knowing that about them, the title "Build God, Then We'll Talk" hardly sounds like it would be one of their cleaner songs.

If you're queasy or uncomfortable with some of the abuses happening in our society, you'll want to avoid this song. And the rest of this review, for that matter, since I quote the song and give the unpleasant story. (Panic! at the Disco is sometimes incorrectly classified as emo from the emotional element of their songs.)

Nonetheless, this song gets an incredibly disgusting image across without a word of coarse language. The song follows a seedy motel and one room's occupants over a night. A lawyer makes the most of a "virgin" soon to be working at his office, meeting her for "'Strictly business,' as he said to the Mrs." The girl later bumps into a cop who offers to ignore her drugs if she'll… indulge him, too.

Not a pleasant image, and it's certainly compounded by a colorful image produced by shifting a popular song from The Sound of Music. "(There are no…) raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses—it's sleeping with roaches and taking best guesses at the color of the sheets before all the stains." The point? If intimacy is supposed to be for love's sake, why is it happening like this?

Many people who hate the style of music (or lyrics) of Panic! at the Disco will agree that Brenden Urie has an appealing voice. They are very much a punk pop band, with a somewhat techno form of rock. A lot of it is beat, but that varies even within the song.

If you don't mind the genre or message, it's actually a surprisingly good song. But avoid the music video.

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Lyrics: 4/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 5/5
Overall: 8/10