About halfway through “Harboring The Hurt I’ve Caused [sic] comes a track called “Do You Like That You Love Me”. A few things here, not least of which is the fact that Brian Fallon goes gold with it. Then there’s the words: if you’re the type of fella that scrolls through his phone at 3am convincing himself that she’ll definitely text back, you’ll get it (not me, you understand….)
But in the middle of these words comes this: “When I drove you home,” sings Cory Wells, in a way that makes it seem like he may burst into tears, “from the Dashboard show, everything seemed so perfect.”
Ahhh, Dashboard Confessional we meet again, Purveyor of the most emo of emo words, but he’s magnificent. And I digress, kind of. Because what we can deduce from all of this is that Cory Wells walks it like he talks it and loves the music he plays – which is always a good start. If not you end up with some corporate bollocks with no substance (hello Kiss).
The title track kicks things off. Acoustic, even light musically, but my goodness, the lyrics are the sound of a man ripping his own heart out, and by the time the crescendo is reached its 1999 again and I am obsessed with a girl I am definitely over now …..
And there’s not a lot of laughs anywhere, the emotion is all over “Gravity”, and “Hopeless” is exactly what you think its going to be. She’s “running away with everything we built”, and you believe she might be in fairness to Wells.
There’s a bit of a feel of the same thing happening again and again – but isn’t that sort of the point? – and stuff like “Natural Disaster” is so brilliantly done who cares.
These songs are in his very soul. “I am bleeding one more song out of me” he offers on “Empty” and he backs that up with this from an interview: “Take care of the people you love. I hope this record means as much to you as the journey did for me.”
You can feel that emotion being almost ripped painfully out of each line. “Breathe Again” will have country pop bands looking for a gold disc smashing his door down for the chance to use it, while “Reprise” reckons “I swear I’m getting better” and you’re not sure whether he’s convincing himself or not.
At the end of it he says (he doesn’t “sing” the line) “Don’t give up on me” and the last one doesn’t offer light at the tunnel, either. Indeed “Long, Long Time” merely has a chorus that goes “I think I am gonna miss you, for a long long time”.
Spoiler alert: that girl in the intro? I saw her a few months ago and drove the other way in case she saw me. I hadn’t seen her since her wedding in 2004. Cory Wells might get it. For everything else, there’s insomnia.
There are different types of singer/songwriter and they’re all worthy. You can write about the world like Springsteen or poetry like Dylan. Or you can do what Cory Wells does and write about your world. Catharsis doesn’t get much better.
Rating 8.5/10
