The Alarmist

Boston's reigning emo kings, Dear Leader are just the band to blast on one's mp3 player while stuck on a crowded subway car on a cold, wet New England winter day, on the way to either a soul-sucking subsistence job, four hours of classes in airless, hangar-like rooms, or a house full of obnoxious roommates who don't understand the listener's deep-seated angst and also always leave the door open when they use the john. For all of these activities, The Alarmist is the perfect soundtrack, full of frontman Aaron Perrino's anguished bellow of a voice and vaguely political but rarely concrete lyrics, and the band's trademark mix of shoegazery distortion and hardcore unison riffing. For anyone who fails to meet at least two of the target demographic's key points, through age, general level of personal happiness or lack of interest in blogging, The Alarmist is pretty tough sledding, simply because of the urge to giggle at the generally wallowing tone and the retreads of musical ideas that Perrino has been working over since his days in the Sheila Divine. Sadly, his one stylistic departure, 2003's Dear Leader debut The Good Times Are Killing Me, was a throwback to the slightly campy doominess of '80s goth rock that was a genuinely good and musically interesting album that was unfortunately received with something akin to revulsion by many Sheila Divine fans; the fact that Dear Leader's more recent work has been far more traditionally emo in its nature has been both understandable and regrettable. The Alarmist is the sound of a band (and in a larger sense, an entire musical subgenre) that's found itself in stasis.