Deep Cuts #22: AFI – 'Sing the Sorrow'
Deep Cuts #22: AFI – 'Sing the Sorrow'
"Misery in song" from the sun-kissed shores of California.
Artist: AFI
Album: Sing the Sorrow
Release: March 11th, 2003
Label: Dreamworks/Nitro
Listen here: Spotify | YouTube
Last November, Californian punk rockers AFI announced that they would play their acclaimed sixth studio album, 2003’s Sing the Sorrow, in full for the first and (reportedly) only time in their storied 32-year-long career.
This announcement was important, I think, for two reasons:
A one-off anniversary show is a measured act of purposeful nostalgia, a respectful (read: classy) acknowledgement of internal legacy without full-blown pandering and ‘shut up and play the hits, Grandpa’ acquiescence.
Sing the Sorrow (still) slaps, and the classics rightfully deserve their due.
So, let’s talk about the record and why it matters in the restless days of 2023.
In Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007), former Noisey columnist and celebrated music writer Dan Ozzi details the trials and tribulations of eleven bands—Green Day, Jawbreaker, Jimmy Eat World, Blink-182, At the Drive-In, The Donnas, Thursday, The Distillers, My Chemical Romance, Rise Against, Against Me!—as they ascended from underground indie obscurity to their big-league, major-label debut.
I absolutely devoured Ozzi’s book upon my first readthrough and, in particular, I appreciated how he was able to use theme and context to situate a band’s struggle within the larger ebb and flow of culture at the time, where shocking events like the sudden death of Kurt Cobain or the tragedy of 9/11 had drastic ripple effects within the realm of punk rock and alternative music.
However, as I mentioned in my book review for New Noise:
“If there’s an easy criticism to level against Sellout, it’s that there are likely many more interesting stories here that it leaves out. By Ozzi’s own admission, acts like The Gaslight Anthem, Reel Big Fish, and Cave In were early contenders and eventual runners-up, and one imagines that others like Sick of it All, AFI, and Fall Out Boy would yield interesting anecdotes as well.”
With the expanded paperback edition of Ozzi’s book including additional chapters focused on artists like Dashboard Confessional, Thrice, Anti-Flag, Less Than Jake, Jawbox, the Bronx, Cursive, and Murder by Death, the curious absence of AFI becomes even more notable.
In fact, and for reasons which I will go into shortly, I’d go as far as to suggest that no group within alternative music navigated the cultural inflection point of punk, hardcore and emo stretching from the mid-90s to the mid-00s better than this particular Californian quartet.
Things were moving very rapidly in the first half of the 2000s. Acts like Jimmy Eat World, The Used and Thursday all gained considerable traction, and within a few short years, others like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance would quickly become household names.
Terms like “goth” and “emo” were only beginning to enter the larger music discourse (albeit in recycled contexts from previous generational movements), and there was already a vast undercurrent of alternative acts ready to take advantage of this newfound attention and the wandering eyes/ears of casual MTV audiences. And yet, in those early middle years, mainstream attention was still very much up for grabs and prospects for success were daringly uncertain. It was a burgeoning cultural space where groups could risk setting the terms of their own musical ascension. Or, at the least, give it a shot.
Enter ‘East Bay hardcore’ veterans AFI: original vocalist Davey Havok, original drummer Adam Carson, bassist Hunter Burgan, and guitarist Jade Puget.
With punk bonafides already stretching back a full decade—including five full-length albums and connections to Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (who produced their first record), The Offspring’s Dexter Holland (Nitro Records founder), and Tiger Army’s Nick 13 (member of Influence 13 along with Puget)—the group had already toured extensively and paid their road-dog dues, earning the credibility necessary to justify a certain degree of creative latitude within punk’s notoriously rigid cultural mores.
1999’s Black Sails in the Sunset incorporated shades of dark melodrama and romanticism within their established, upbeat hardcore sound, while 2000’s The Art of Drowning fused their notable affinity for horror punk with the anthemic clean choruses of 2000s pop punk, proving that the quartet possessed the skills necessary to craft devastating, stadium-ready hooks.
As it turned out, Sing the Sorrow would end up being my introduction to the world of AFI, and I imagine I’m not alone in this respect.
The record’s singles—“Girls Not Grey,” “The Leaving Song Pt. II,” and “Silver and Cold”—were utterly inescapable on late-night rock video TV programming, and every facet of the band seemed, to me, at least, be the epitome of cool. From their punk rocker aesthetic and Havok’s androgynous presentation to the album’s gothic-tinged concept, fantastical escapism and lyrical focus, there was a style and delivery to Sing the Sorrow that I hadn’t encountered anywhere else.
As their major label debut for Dreamworks, pedigree and patience became primary concerns for LP#6. Working closely with the production team of Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins) and Jerry Finn (blink-182, Rancid, Green Day), AFI were able to take the time necessary to craft the album in a more painstaking, deliberate fashion rather than the often frantic rush to record utilised on previous full-lengths.
As Havok notes in a Backspin video on their 2003 album, the band were holed away for months with Finn (and occasionally Vig) for the Sing the Sorrow sessions, including extended time for Havok’s vocal tracking. The end result is a record that emphasises each unique aspect of a member’s skill set across twelve diverse tracks: Carson’s playful rhythms and inventive fills; Burgan’s methodical fretwork and dialled-in bass tone; and Puget’s roaring guitar sound, at once classically metal in its tonality and intricacy, while also being rooted in the strumming defiance of punk’s ‘three chords and the truth.’
Even Havok’s energetic banshee yell was tempered and fortified into a powerful melodic croon—even if his high-pitch vocal timbre wasn’t exactly for everyone’s tastes. (In his review of the album for EW, Jim Farber said of Havok: “[He] owns the squeakiest voice in current rock. Think early Geddy Lee imitating a squirrel.”)
Across the record, AFI manage to deftly refine and perfect an engaging fusion of their disparate collective influences: Rancid, the Smiths, Bauhaus, Slayer, the Cure, Guns N' Roses, Refused, and many more. Whether it’s through sweaty breakneck tempos (“Dancing Through Sunday”), extravagant power balladry (“This Time Imperfect”), call-and-response urgency (“Silver and Cold”), or industrial clang meets sweeping melodrama (“Death of Seasons”), each element of the album sounds rich, warm, and cohesive twenty years on.
And yet, in looking back on the record through the lens of nostalgia and legacy, everything you need to know about Sing the Sorrow and the potency of AFI’s distinct punk rock alchemy is present—ready, waiting and fully formed—on the album’s standout deep cut: “This Celluloid Dream.”
Bursting through with a quickfire percussive cavalcade from Carson and Puget’s insanely catchy lick, the track is quickly propelled into the kind of stop-start mayhem that could easily translate from a DIY youth hall to a crowded stadium floor.
With layered vocals and triumphant gang shouts, “This Celluloid Dream” then takes one of the quartet’s best-ever choruses and lets it soar to dizzying new heights. Havok has never sounded more anthemic and in the pocket than when he’s belting out that “you’re so cinematic” refrain. It’s real rockstar stuff. Along with careful use of tension and tactical backing guitar harmonies, each moment of the track sports an ear-worm hook ready to borrow deep in your brain, the type of melody that can be endlessly hummed and sung absent-mindedly without any need for lyrical comprehension.
But, alas, if that’s what you’re after, Havok’s Edgar Allan Poe-aping poetic tendencies have you covered there, too, with a devastating third verse stanza:
“In the glitter, in the dark, sunk into velvet/
Praying this will never end.
In the shadow of a star, in static pallor/
I realized I never began.”
In late 2016, I interviewed all four members of AFI for the release cycle of their self-titled tenth record (2017), otherwise known in fan circles as the ‘Blood Album.’ When asked Havok if he and the band factored in their own legacy into the creative process in a way that was consciously self-aware and reflexive, Havok’s response was politely dismissive but undeniably fascinating:
“To me, no record means more than the other record. They’re moments in time, and those moments were definitely important. But as the people who are involved in creating them, we don’t have that separation of records that you do as a listener.”
Expanding on whether an AFI record should be conceived as the product of a singular, creative vision or merely just the greater sum of its individual parts, Havok took pains to emphasise the fluidity of progression:
“I would say the latter is more accurate. However, as with all albums, there are moments of referential themes that connect the record together, and that happens organically in the writing process. As we write, we write a huge amount of songs, and [slowly] they tend to merge both thematically and tonally so that even with the greater amount of songs that you see appearing on the record, there is that continuity.”
This insight into AFI’s creative mindset allows me to rethink Sing the Sorrow in new and interesting ways.
It’s clear from interviews that each one of the band’s four members did not set out to write a ‘classic’ or actively break into the mainstream. And yet, their experience in the California hardcore punk scene allowed them to channel creative expression in ways that retained a sense of authenticity and idiosyncrasy that generated progression without sacrifice or compromise, yielding rich and dynamic results in the process.
For a more comprehensive deep dive into this record, check out our upcoming Deep Cuts episode on The Pitch of Discontent podcast, where Wil Collins (Candescent A.D/Prosthetic Records) joins the show to chat about Sing the Sorrow and the startling impact of AFI’s magnum opus. Listen below: