Be My Escape

There’s someone down below blowing you a kiss
They watch from their windows
As all arms fall to their sides, and all eyes fix
On the death of tomorrow

Alkaline Trio’s Crimson is a portrait of a band in flux. But then, they’d always been in motion. From their hard-scrabble roots as bicycle messengers on Chigaco’s West Side, to snotty Pop Punkers dressed in black, and then the cabaret eyeliner of this album. Whether Crimson is their best is, to put it mildly, up for debate. There is no single definitive Alkaline Trio record Their eras are simply too distinct. But one can’t do an overview of 00s Emo without recognising Alkaline Trio’s most swaggeringly executed, Hot Topicly XxXgothicXxX record.

Given Alkaline Trio are my favourite band of all time this essay may be more personal than most.

Alkaline Trio had always written about dark topics, but initially there was a distance. Their lyrics referenced blood, guts, medicine- but as metaphor. There weren’t literal vampires stalking the streets of San Francisco, there were shady people out to rob, steal and take advantage of you. Lovers kissed, broke up and left each other in bits, but they didn’t physically chop each other up. That’s why their early albums hit so hard for certain fans. They’re autobiographical and raw, very Jawbreaker. Using gory images to highlight the desperation and turmoil of inner-city life. The band never recaptured the bone-cutting realism they had on Goddamnit (1998) and Maybe I’ll Catch Fire (2000). And to me that’s okay.

Following albums, From Here To Infirmary (2001) and Good Mourning (2003) saw them hit the biting point. With leaner, tighter songs and the immortal Jerry Finn producing Good Mourning. These albums were poppy and jagged enough to cut through their rivals and successful singles like Stupid Kid and We’ve Had Enough brought them to wider prominence. Now the Trio were deploying their interest in ghosts and ghoulies in more overt, Halloweeny ways. Misfits style, skulls and bones, blood paint and vicar outfits. Using the Sisters of Mercy bombastic This Corrosion choir as their intro music on stage. They took on an accessibility that allowed them entry into the second tier of the 00s Pop Punk explosion. The strength and accessibility of these two albums secured their legacy, as they wrote some of the tightest, razorblade-candy-apple Pop Punk ever.

Crimson is their evolution from that era. Taking that poise and professionalism and moving in a grander, more theatrical direction. Indulgent? Maybe, but with so much to hold.

Mercy Me was the first Alkaline Trio song I ever heard. Included on Kerrang Magazine’s Summer 2005 “Field of Screams” compilation alongside scene stalwarts Finch and NOFX. It’s the Trio at their most punchy: a crisp cathartic single of dread and poetry. Powered along by a gnawing guitar arpeggio, melding into crooning verses and bellowed choruses. Smart, a little funny and reflecting the vampires and paladins I was becoming obsessed with through anime and comic books. This was a band a shadow shade down from the ultra-famous Green Days and Blink-182s of the world that I’d cut my little fangs on. Alkaline Trio were something black and red and distinct and hidden: a band that I could call my own.

So drive yourself insane tonight, it’s not that far away
And I just filled up your tank earlier today

My music-loving father (I love you), who worked in London at the time, went to the now long-closed but once immensely influential Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus to find the album. Returning telling me that it wasn’t in the “Rock & Pop” section but in “Alternative.” Which sounded incredibly sophisticated to me at the time.

The band were clearly straining against the strictures of the Pop Punk scene. After two albums of successful distilled songs, they wanted more. Searching for something bigger in scope and more theatrical in look. In this way they slot in nicely against the Emo bands who they’d now inspired, donning suits and ties, bowler caps and red ties. Their longtime interest in religion and damnation becoming an interesting mirror image of the nascent My Chemical Romance. They were never “Emo”, not of that world, but they were channeling the same zeitgeist. I would argue successfully.

Album opener Time To Waste exemplifies this in grand style. Luxurious pianos flow over the track, guitar walls thunder and the moaning lyrics evoke an image of doomsday. Burn and Sadie take this cinematic ambition still further, both anthemic and arena-filling in their foggy scope.

The cover features two people who are no longer with the band, but whose presence still looms large. The woman on the cover is Skiba’s now ex-wife and frequent lyrical topic Monica, and behind her is departed drummer Derek Grant.

Skiba’s lyrical wit is well known and well complimented, but it’s worth recognising just how much of a draw it is for new Alkaline Trio fans. Even at its best Pop Punk lyrics tend to be straightforward and economical with wordage but on Crimson Skiba waxes at his best.

C-c-c-calling all cars, all coroners
We’ve got a dead one here
And anybody else receiving this
The west coast is far from clear
Like a time bomb or sudden death
It’s gonna find you when you least expect
It’s gonna leave you with the emptiest feeling inside
(Over analyzed)

Skiba has flair, his own special sauce- he always has. It’s easy to poke fun at his habbit of writing about films, tv shows, books. But he always squeezes new, exciting worlds out of them. Every lyric becomes an Alkaline Trio song fully. Of all the Pop Punk and Emo lyricists who wanted desperately to be Morrissey, Skiba comes closest, not through overwrought diary scribbling, but clear, clever, lines. The essence of all great Pop music.

Such was Alkaline Trio’s influence on me that I defiantly never really considered myself an Emo like many of my friends did. Instead I constructed my own bespoke identity as a besuited Goth-Punk. I never had swoopy hair and preferred dressing in charity shop collared shirts and formal trousers. Secondhand ties and bullet belts. I even bought a crazy pinstriped blazer with a skull patch on the pocket and a zip down the back, my pride and joy. Just to try and imitate them a little and cut myself off from a movement I am now writing an entire project about (haha.).

Having your favourite album be in this kind of weird middling period of a band is a mixed blessing. Crimson super-fans are relatively rare, we’re definitely outnumbered by the Goddamit fans and don’t have quite the wider reach of the Infirmary fans. But it’s also wonderful to have a little gem, so soaked in personal memory and meaning, to enjoy. It feels good that Mercy Me is able to tangle with the legendary Radio for being Trio’s highest played song online. Whatever the complex feelings of other Alkaline Trio fans have, I adore Crimson- the album that added a glug of deep red wine to my fizzing Teenage brain.