Review Summary: Skramz AOTY
"I came amidst the horny slog of revolution and woke up to a technocratic fairyland"
all you are is we, the debut full-length from Vancouver-based screamo band Emma Goldman, revels in the absurdity of life under late capitalism—the irony of our social politics replicating the hierarchal structures perpetrated against the working class—and serving sandwiches with a
***ing smile, please. It's angry, it's critical, but it's also humorous in its stark representation of our collective fatigue and the vices we use to cope. The band has undergone a couple of different revisions since their inception over seven years ago, but with their debut full-length, they have arrived in nothing short of full bloom, displaying a tight-knit lineup oozing in musical chemistry, dizzying riffage, and a thematic vision that is so well executed it actually boggles my mind. It helps that it also
sounds fantastic. Absolutely hair-raising guitar and bass tones that bite high without compromising on bottom-end (just
try not donning a stank face when the bass punches in and out of the intro to "I don't think much at all"), highly adaptive drum work with one of the tastiest snare tones I've heard this side of '96 (perfect ping to pow ratio, ya dig), vicious dual vocals with carefully mapped out patterns, and a clever lyrical approach that often reflects the collage theme of the album artwork to enchant and disorient the listener. Crème de la crème.
Not only is the record superbly produced and mixed, the songwriting is best in class, clearly the culmination of years of fine-tuning with a wide net of influence. Emma Goldman plays loose with genre boundaries and has managed to chisel out a distinct sonic identity, evoking the scrappy melodicism of bands like Portraits of Past and Saetia while adding a splash of white belt sass and a modern sense of heaviness—a melodic swinginess tastefully adorned with metalcore chugs and panicked incisions. Even when the band hangs out in a dirge, their songwriting maintains a naturalistic quality that swells and drops with dynamic tension. I haven't even mentioned the two produced-in-house rave interludes "diss track" and "canned response", which are almost too fleshed out and addictive to be considered interludes, or the ASMR poetry of "whispers catastrophe" that flows oh-so-perfectly into the slow and explosive crescendo of "this is the land of lost content". All of this combines into an experience that is viscerally engaging from the first minute to the very last.
all you are is we is chock-full of variety, that's for sure, but it all feels uniquely Emma Goldman—fresh, fun, and incredibly powerful when it wants to be. It is easily one of the best produced screamo records of the 2020s thus far and a more-than-promising debut full-length from a band already on top of their game. Don't sleep.
