Say Anything reunite sharing new single “PSYCHE!” on Dine Alone Records.
The band returns to the stage this year after a hiatus that began in 2019, with a four night run of sold out shows at Bowery Ballroom in New York City beginning April 28th, followed by a return appearance to the recently revived Bamboozle Festival taking place in Atlantic City on Saturday, May 6th. In October, the band will return to the city where they formed more than twenty years ago, Los Angeles, for three nights at The Regent, beginning on October 18th, before heading to Las Vegas for two highly anticipated performances at the sold out When We Were Young Festival, taking place on October 21st and 22nd.
In anticipation of the band’s upcoming live shows, Say Anything are thrilled to share “Psyche!,” out now via Dine Alone Records, their first new music together as a band since 2019’s would-be swansong, Oliver Appropriate. “Psyche!” reunites Say Anything’s mouthpiece and mastermind Max Bemis with the band’s original drummer Coby Linder, former bandmates Alexander Kent on bass, Parker Case on synths and programming, and adding into the fold Brian Warren (Weatherbox) and Fred Mascherino (The Color Fred, Taking Back Sunday), who offered additional production on the track, alongside Case.
With his signature snarl, Bemis proclaims in the opening lines of the song, “We are born again. We’ve died and sprung to life, so wet and fresh.” “Psyche!,” replete with lyrical nods to the band’s contemporaries in the pop-punk scene – “I will sing the requiem” (Saves the Day), “Blink and you’ll miss” (Blink-182), “To the crucifix with Twin Fucking Forks” (Chris Carrabba) – is a near six minute long, stream-of-consciousness, self-referential and attitude-laden return for one of the most beloved bands to come out of the early-oughts alternative rock scene. After the jump, read a letter from Max on the new song, where the band is at, and what’s to come.
Max On “Psyche!” and the reintroduction of Say Anything
Say Anything’s (public) career began with a record where I stretched my superego into a character that could define everything I hated about myself and my generation, and how that mess of bohemian pretensions and wide-eyed conviction could one day, perhaps, be a real, redeemable boy.
Almost two decades later, after marinating in both the toxic sludge of artistic industrialization and the actual spiritual good this incredibly dubious notion was doing for real people in emotional pain, I realized I stood at a crossroads where I could literally become that character (i.e. keep snorting things and chasing my teenage dream), or cease defining myself by being “Emo Beck” and throw myself into life as a father, a husband and someone who truly cherished the process of writing, my first love as a creator.
Five-ish years went by and I went broke, went through a jarring mid-life crisis, got sober and almost lost said wife and kids to a combination of my own naivete and rubbing up against a few sick fucking people who probably just needed a hug but instead took it out on the nearest bastion of innocence they try to skullfuck.
I stopped giving a shit about the Bowie-like conceit of Say Anything being a dead character named Oliver who I metaphorically drowned in order to escape a false image of myself I had accidentally imprinted on my art…
…because I live on Planet Earth and that kind of makes no sense to anyone not obsessed with Grant Morrison and the film Adaptation.
After spending almost a decade shunning it, I simply needed to play grating emotional hardcore music because I was sad, tired and wanted to scream and cry a lot. Maybe I’m an emo late-bloomer in that while I was jerking off to film class in West Hollywood, my fans were going through real life traumas that I really feel like I’ve only experienced recently. And specifically, I missed lighting up the skeptical eyes of Coby Linder, who founded Say Anything with me, with just an acoustic song, too many time changes and the need to excite my own personal Silent Bob on a deep level.
During the peak of said emotional mid-life entanglement, on very little sleep, probably during or directly following a good cry to Something to Write Home About, I sat on my porch as the sun rose, shirt off, sweating, spitting, drooling and improvised the song “Psyche!” in one take.
I sent Coby the acoustic demo and he got it immediately: Say Anything’s future (which is, in terms of the band’s meta-narrative, technically, some kind of sublimated afterlife, but again, very few people give a fuck) consisted of a project disembodied from my own personal bullshit. It would exist for what it was ever good for in the first place, to help people, to excite them, to drive around and scream along to with old friends or new ones you didn’t realize were also once emo, and, in sharing this moment, you now trust more on some weird level. In terms of its effect on me and Coby, we simply accepted we were now just fans of our own band.
The music we’re working on now is so meta it’s not. It’s a satire of everything our band was, and the idea of every emo band coming back after five years, going back to basics and grasping for the fanbase they discarded so callously by diving headfirst into their fans’ wants and needs, instead of gorging on major label cash and then still trying to be the next Animal Collective or Strokes despite what their band actually sounds like, to be thwarted every time by indie gatekeepers.
“Psyche!” is probably the apex of this concept, full of easter eggs, sincere attempts at stadium rock and an incredibly disturbing outro hinting at the real-life situation this new music revolves around.
For the first time since our first record, probably, the irony behind the concept comes full circle and becomes utterly sincere because this neurotic, cheesy, and excitable heartfelt music is what I needed to survive the hardest time of my life, a phrase I remain #humbledddddd to hear from fans of Say Anything to this day; again, Say Anything now serves the same purpose for me as it does for them, which, again ironically, actually has nothing to do with the generous money we’re getting from festivals to play shows again; this song only exists because of the strange brew of Saves the Day and Queen that I just needed to hear as much as I needed to make it… which is why we formed the band in Y2K in the first place.
It’s also actually played and sung by the people who will be playing it live, including Coby himself, the prodigal bass-master Alexander T. Kent (of In Defense of the Genre and our self-titled LP), the beautiful enigma that is Parker Case, as well as two of my favorite musicians, Brian Warren (of the better version of my ow band called Weatherbox) and Fred Mascherino (of Color Fred, TBS, and generally just shredding). So, this would be a first in that what you’re hearing…is a real band, not me Princing it up.
All that remains is to look you directly in the fucking eye and make you sing it back to me…that is, after I drag my middle-aged, hypothyroidal, hemorrhoidal dad bod out of the side of the bed where I’ve spent most of the last decade vaping and get ready to fling myself around the stage like Galifianakis deluding himself into thinking he’s Mick Jagger, as my five kids watch dumbfounded like “Who the fuck does he think he is?” and my wife smiles sadly knowing that even now, I think this bullshit impresses her.
Say Anything Tour Dates:
04/28/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
04/29/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
04/30/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
05/01/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
05/06/23 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Bamboozle Festival – TICKETS
08/04/23 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre – TICKETS *
10/18/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent (SOLD OUT)
10/19/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent (SOLD OUT)
10/20/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent – TICKETS
10/21/23 – Las Vegas, NV @ When We Were Young Festival (SOLD OUT)
10/22/23 – Las Vegas, NV @ When We Were Young Festival (SOLD OUT)
* = supporting The Front Bottoms
