I’ll be honest with all of y’all. I picked this record because of its cover. I’m not exactly sure what it is that I love about that artwork, but there’s no denying its awesomeness. I think it’s saying something about the modern American family, and their tendency to ignore important problems or something. Regardless of whatever “important” statement it is (or isn’t) making, it’s undeniably sick.
Anyway, I stand by my belief that when picking out 365 records, there’s no shame on basing a few choices off of the covers.
Now, for a critique of the actual music. Think Silversun Pickups, with the distortion turned way down, without any grand, important, pretentious messages in the lyrics. All of the sudden, you have a much better band, right? Right. The eleven tracks on Diary are exactly how I like my emo music: long, dark, and angry. The average song length on this album is well over four minutes, with only one song dipping below the three-minute mark. As for content, most tracks have fairly vague lyrics about what appears to be fairly depressing topics—keep in mind that’s only an assumption. From the angsty whine that front man Jeremey Enigk uses, it sure seems upon first listen that he’s spouting lyrics of the emotional variety, but he could be singing out of a rhyming phonebook for all I know.
So as you may have put together, I’m not entirely sure about what’s going on with a few aspects of this record. I couldn’t really understand the lyrics, and I’m not positive about that cover. All that matters, though, is that I really like the record as a whole. I may come to understand it with a few more listens, but at the moment, the only important thing is that I feel that this is good music.
Swole Ear 
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