Max Bemis is the man behind California pop outfit Say Anything. Bemis started the band in 2001, self-releasing Baseball that year followed by …Is a Real Boy on Doghouse Records in 2004. The latter was Bemis’ attempt to ease out of the pop-punk category towards what he calls “respectable music” per the band’s website. In fact, he went through quite a contemplative stage as he prepared the album -- “I thought often about what the point of my life was. Was I doomed to remain yet another earnest, upper-middle class bred whine-rocker? After all, hidden deep in the recesses of my mind, I had hidden the notion that I could do something incredible and different, that I could be somebody like Warhol, or Jesus. I had to write an album that was revolutionary in its content and presentation. Finally, one night, it hit me. That was what my record had to be about: the artistic struggle, the fact that every creative person has this sick ambition to affect some sort of change in society with their art, to be more than just a guy in a band or a poet or a sculptor. I couldn’t decide if this ambition was a good or bad thing but I decided to parody that overzealous drive in human beings by crafting a truly over the top musical about...myself.”

Drummer Coby Linder is the only member (besides Bemis) who has remained a part of Say Anything since its inception; Bemis played every other instrument on …Is a Real Boy. In 2007, Say Anything released its first album of new material on J Records titled In Defense of the Genre, a two-disc effort that featured forays into many different genres. The band expects to release This Is Forever, also on J Records later this year.

Georgia’s Manchester Orchestra support with material off 2006’s I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, originally released on Favorite Gentlemen and then again on Canvasback Music in 2007. The band’s well-crafted pop ditties and easy-on-the-ears, soaring melodies are perfectly complemented by singer Andy Hull wistful lyricism. Make sure you get there early to catch them live, along with sets by Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves and Weatherbox.

[Say Anything MySpace]
[Manchester Orchestra MySpace]
[Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves MySpace]
[Weatherbox MySpace]