Say Anything - Oliver Appropriate (January 25, 2019) Album • Page 55

Yeah, I'm not really sure what you are referring to here... but aside from that I agree it is totally possible that everything is a manifestation of his true beliefs. Many times the most outrageous sorts of work are based on some sort of truth. It's even more tricky to recognize the pieces of truth when the work is said to be fictional. Hopefully the people close to him can help him if needed.

 

Fuck off with this vague shit, anything anyone on this site even slightly has their feelings hurt by is “extremely gross”

Either explain yourself or better yet keep this entire line of conversation to the Accountability thread so the rest of us can freely discuss a band we actually like

 

Don't really think there was anything vague about it, tbh

 

Maybe pump the brakes a bit.

Equating “Wow I Can Get Sexual Too” to, well, the feelings of the LGBT community is pretty gross and your insistence on trying to turn this into some sort of “us vs them” isn’t really helping anyone.

On the flip side it seems like you’re the one with a chip on your shoulder in regards to that last part of your post. If you can’t handle people airing out their grievances or discussing the problematic nature of Max, or any artist, maybe take a step back and evaluate why you’re the one with a problem.

 

sounds like you’re well aware this isn’t the place for you, then, so you’re your own problem

 

Yeah, nah. Not gonna just stay silent and sit back while people discuss a band and ignore the problematic shit that goes along with it. It’s not vague at all. Was pretty clear that it’s extremely gross lyrically and very questionable, and that’s just on top of all the shit Max has been doing on Twitter. So, you can fuck off with this shit.

 

I follow Max on Twitter, and read most of what he posts. I sometimes see people saying that he’s “problematic on Twitter,” but like...am I blind to it? What he he been saying that people are so aghast about? Is he just being misunderstood?

I honestly feel like he has a knack for saying things the wrong way, but I’ve never seen him say something that I thought was outright problematic.

 

With this record Max seems to be saying "I'm afraid that if I pursued my homosexual desires further I would have become homicidal and suicidal". This is not such a bad observation with the additional reflection on the greater societal conditions that gave rise to those emotions. The discomfort for me at least is that this aspect is missing from the record outside of the brief mentions of his same sex desires being implied to have been caused from parental dynamics. Without a clear mention of these conditions, it makes it feel like he's glad he's decided not to pursue these desires because it would've ended in ruin. But, I ultimately recognize that I'm being selfish for expecting that from someone else's art.

Maybe all those considerations just go without saying nowadays. Perhaps I'm not finding the release in this record I was expecting because that's not the point. Maybe its just to display how twisted a soul can become under the expectations of others; the same way I'm having a strong reaction to this album rollout since his manifesto was posted. It's forcing me to reflect on my own relationship with my own homosexuality. Maybe I'll be thankful for that someday but right now I just feel confused by the way I feel challenged by this.

 

He seems to just gets really defensive when people call him out on something he says that's problematic. I know with the people calling him transphobic for something he said there was a lot of back and forth and even though I remember seeing him apologize he also kind of had a "everyone else who still wants to complain can screw off" attitude. So that probably didn't help.

 

He’s always been a little.....sensitive about things. I get it, I have bipolar disorder as well and ask any one of my friends I talk to regularly like several users in here that one day something won’t bother me and the next I’ll have an absolute meltdown and go about dismantling all of my friendships and shut myself off and that’s even with proper medication. So I can kind of see WHY he can be like that but in regards to actual problematic things he’s said the most recent situation involved him being called out for a post that read like he was saying “if you have x genetelia then you are x gender and you aren’t y gender” which as you can imagine came across as really dismissive of trans people. So a few people called him on it, some more aggressively than others but with how poorly trans people are treated and how exhausting it must be to explain these things daily I can see where that comes from, and Max either A:blocked them and refused to partake in The Discourse™️ Or B: tried to make examples of them by quote tweeting them followed by blocking them. He issued a half baked apology that more or less sounded like an old man saying “well that’s just the way I am” and it still rubbed many the wrong way.

 

Sorry, I wrote that while cooking and didn’t really proof read, I mostly mean that besides some tenseness I have enjoyed hearing different thoughts people have had whether that be why they liked it or why they didn’t like it (especially from other lgbt people)

 

Yeah mostly he was like toxic masculinity comes from having a dick! Which is wrong from 1) genitalia =/= gender 2) that line of thinking leads to thinking that men are just naturally like that, which is a slippery slope into avoiding accountability for that behavior even if that’s not what was meant. When trans people, whether they did so gently or not, told him this he was like telling me I’m being transphobic is keeping us from fighting fascists or something, it was a lot of incoherent defensive stuff. He also compare the main character of this album to abusive musicians, and I really don’t fuck with the idea of men who are shitty to women are actually repressed gays. Obviously, being lgbt doesn’t mean your incapable of shitty behavior but intertwining that so much does set off alarm bells with all the other context

 

Likely the best SA album since the self-titled. Not a bad note to go out on.

 

https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/interview-say-anything-frontman-max-bemis.html

 

I just skimmed that, but let me get this straight: the interviewer praises him for dealing with the topic of sexuality "in a sensitive fashion," suggests that the album is about "what can happen if people aren’t careful and honest with themselves," and also never asks him anything about real-life violence against queer people?

Cool, cool.

 

I didn't read all of it. I read about half and then stopped because there's a part of me that just isn't willing to believe what he says. Another part of me doesn't think it's worth it in reference to him reading and watching all this stuff about serial killers, going method by snorting a lot of pills and risking his mental stability around his family members which includes very young and impressionable children.

 

I really enjoyed that interview, I think it addresses a lot of what we talk about how the character of Oliver is clearly not 100% disconnected from Max and helps further clarify what Max is going for here.

Also love Craig Jenkins, so I'm really glad the two of them were able to talk.

 

Who played drums on this?

 

Karl Keuhn of Museum Mouth.

 

And sometimes Will Yip. He did “some drums and percussion,” haha. Vague.

 

just listened to this in full for the first time

I only liked Pink Snot and Captive Audience

and now I'm just sad that this is it

 

Listen again! I think it’s easily his best since s/t. Just ignore the terrible concept

 

Sediment broke my fucking heart tho

 

"The quality of the music, or how successful we were, that’s completely subjective. What isn’t subjective is that someone once brought the album home, and it made them feel better. Or they came to a show, and they got to release their feelings, and then feel a catharsis. So that’s how I remember it. It’s just that it was, even though it was certainly a fickle, complex organism, it was based on positivity, and it all came from my will to try to give people hope and make them feel more proud. So there was always something positive in the center of it. I hope it’s remembered for that." - Max Bemis