Tell All Your Friends: A hoopla Album Review

This album is more than 20 years old! Does it now qualify as Dad Rock?

I've been wanting to talk about this album FOREVER! Unfortunately, it hasn't been available on the library's free music streaming platform, Freegal. However, now that we've begun to offer hoopla, I can finally tell all my friends here on the Caldwell Public Library blog about one of my favorite albums. If you haven't checked it out yet, hoopla is an all-in-one streaming app offering movies, TV shows, music, audiobooks, eBooks, comics and more! You can read more about it here, or log in here with your Caldwell Public Library card and start browsing!

Taking Back Sunday's debut album, Tell All Your Friends remains one of Emo's most

influential albums. Released in 2002, it quickly became the template from which generations of bands would source their sound for years to come. The album was RIAA certified gold in 2005, and went platinum in 2023, proving the album's lasting impact and keystone status as one of the genre's best. Taking Back Sunday began in the burgeoning Long Island Emo/Hardcore scene in 1999, and the band continues to tour as of the writing of this blog, with their last album releasing late 2023. Tell All Your Friends has been analyzed, critiqued, reviewed and written about extensively as one of Emo's most foundational albums, but what exactly makes this album great?

I know an album is a certified banger when I don't skip a single song. However, if you've never heard a TBS song before, pull up the album and start on track 3, "Cute Without The 'E' (Cut From The Team)". What a great title, right? So dramatic! All the staples of classic Emo are here: exaggerated vocal delivery, clean instrumentals that break into hard driving, distorted choruses, call and response vocal lines, and lyrics chronicling jealousy and depression heightened to an absurd degree. It's a little melodramatic but also a bit tongue in cheek. Adam Lazzara and John Nolan scream their hearts out at each other above tight knit rhythm guitars and flowing leads, while Mark O'Connell's drumming provides dancy, grove inspired back beats that propel the songs forward with an infectious rhythm.

"You're So Last Summer" is a great example of TBS's ability to write poppy, punk infused anthems with clever hooks. This track also includes one of my favorite stanzas that shows the band's proclivity towards conflicting, dissonant declarations in their lyrics.

"I'd never lie to you, unless I had to

I'll do what I got to

Unless I had to

I'll do what I got to

The truth is you could slit my throat

And with my one last gasping breath

I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt"

'I'd never lie unless I needed to, and really, I'm the victim here'. Gas lightening has never been so smooth.

Really, it's an album that rewards attentive listening. There's plenty of catchy sing-alongs to bang your head to, but repeated listens reveal the depth and cleverness present not only in the band's exceptional word play, but layers of sound and structure. Sign into hoopla, give it spin, sing your heart out, and try to absorb all of that youthful energy and angst. I know I could use some.