The Red and Black

Issue date: 8/21/08 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: Courtesy theswear.com The Swear performs Aug. 28 at WUOG's "Live in the Lobby" [Click to enlarge]

History of Cinema - The Swear

THE SWEAR

Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks

Atlanta band The Swear is an emo band. Its debut LP, "Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks," is an emo record.

Though most self-important music connoisseurs would turn up their noses at such a description, emo does not always imply a bad thing.

Planetary Group, The Swear's publicity company, is right when it said on The Swear's press release that the emo genre as a whole has "finally graduated high school" and many bands have moved onto representing a much more valid "existential crisis."

However, The Swear seems to have missed that graduation and still belongs solely on the playlists of misunderstood 15-year-olds.

The band's music represents the genre's worst stereotypes and embodies everything people abhorr about the emo mindset.

From the band members' thick black eyeliner to the fact that the lead singer supposedly "has been known to hang out in graveyards," according to the news release, this band should not be any kind of ambassador for the genre.

These traits may seem inherently cool to a morbid high schooler, but most people would merely ask, "Why?" And that seems to be a question for which The Swear does not have an answer.

Elizabeth Elkins, the lead singer and a University alumna, is an award-winning lyricist - she received the grand prize in The John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2002.

However, it is difficult to appreciate any lyrics from "Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks" due in part to the way she inarticulately growls and shouts the words.

It is just as difficult to understand what she is saying let alone gather answers to humanity's "existential crisis."

The only lyrics that actually fought their way through her poor enunciation and the mess of loud background music seemed more pertinent to the teeny-bopper sect, considering they were actually about high school.

Thankfully, the entire record does not fit into this mold of growls and power-chords. The track, "History of Cinema," features lyrics that are comprehensible, though disjointed. Parts of it are even catchy.

The background music on this track also seems to break the record's trend, and it sounds like the kind of music you would jump up and down to while spinning.

Arguably pointless and unable to provide coherent answers to life's questions, "Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks" is the kind of record that is perfect for playing in the background at a party or while driving.

It can't stand up to philosophical questions and offers nothing of real substance to the music community, but the album could be appreciated while the mind is engrossed with other more interesting activities.

- Courtney Smith

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