The Unfortunate Advent of “Either/Or”: Sorority Noise`s “Joy, Departed”

By Rhys Pearce

If sorority noise`s sophomore album joy, departed is an album of halves, you`d be hard-pressed to choose just two. In fact, from the opening track, “Blissith”, the album is chock-full of dichotomies. From the whispering vocals which can become a shout, to the vocalist and songwriter of the band, Cameron Boucher, only ever using the pronouns “I” and “You”, the listener is repeatedly presented with two contrasting ideas, often at the same time. But somewhat unexpectedly for an emo album, its defining contrast is happy/sad, with an obvious slant towards happy. Thematically, the album focuses on all the usual suspects: unrequited love, mental illness and drug abuse, to name a few. But rather than name-dropping these issues for the “pity prestige”, Boucher makes an active attempt to confront and deal with them.

This a fresh message in the emo-sphere, but one that I feel is necessary. For too long, artists in the genre have been treating these problems as something to be proud of. Of course, they`re not something to be ashamed of, but not being one doesn’t make them the other: it is exactly that kind of “either/or” thinking the band wish to target with this album. People are drawn to Emo because the feelings it expresses can often only be expressed in this way, but once it becomes an identity it can become problematic. You are not your shortcomings, and thinking that you are means you will never be able to overcome them.

I am not the first person to come to this realisation. But the people who realise this often suppress this idea, because their whole identity has become founded in the Emo genre. This is explained in what I consider to be the album`s most powerful lines, from the song “Art School Wannabe”: “maybe I’m just scared to admit that/ I might not be as dark as I think/ Maybe I am not the person/ that I never wanted to be”. Nobody wants to feel that depression is their natural state, but once you romanticize it and accept it as who you are, it`s hard to shake the feeling. If you define yourself by what you are not, then it becomes so much harder to grow as a person; Even if you hate sadness, you have to accept it, because you`ve sworn off happiness, and it`s the only other option. Isn`t it?

In fairness, it wasn't something that happened randomly. Emo was destined to become like this, because those who it appealed to felt like they had no other social identity. It has become a cliché, but for whatever reason, the fans of the genre really are rejected from mainstream society. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the stigma around mental illness, which was the reason for my own descent into the emo-sphere over two years ago. A lot like this album, I experienced 2018 as a year of two halves. If you had asked me what I thought of the album at the beginning of the year, I probably would’ve hated it. But after June, I began to feel like my life was falling apart around me. But I won't tell you why, because I can’t.

And that was the worst part: I didn`t feel like I could tell anyone about any part of this. The feelings filled me up, and once they had, they wouldn`t move. For a long time, I just didn`t have an outlet for it, like a bottle without an opening. Every second I had, I was listening to music, but it just wasn`t working. The emotions in the songs I was listening to were completely different to the ones I was feeling, and trying to find one in the other was like trying to hug a ghost. And then I discovered emo. Listening to the first track written for the album, “Using”, I found myself in total agreement with everything that Boucher was saying. And I was still sinking, I was still so deep I couldn’t even contemplate the surface. But now I had a roadmap for this previously unchartered territory. As Boucher says on my album-favourite, “Nolsey” “so drain me of the parts that weigh me down/ take my skin and tear me up/ make me out to be stronger than I know”.

And for a time, Emo was all I listened to. But eventually, the things that made it so helpful became dangerous. I had needed it to release the pain and despair which had filled me, but once you are empty of those things, you can’t keep listening, because it starts to fill you up again. The kind of person who can relate to every single lyric in an Emo song is not a healthy person. They need help. But if they allow that illness to become part of their identity, they won’t ever get it. Thus, I’ve made an active effort to stop being so engaged with music, and not to make myself sad for no reason by listening to depressing music when I’m happy. But I still listen to this album, no matter what mood I’m in. On one level, it`s just damned good music. The instrumentals are polyphonic, resonant, and generally epic. The lyrics avoid cliché, instead conjuring powerful images at every turn. And while Boucher`s vocals take some getting used to, they grow on you like mould. But at its core, it’s just not an album about sadness: it’s an album about the path out of sadness. And it`s uplifting. Listening to one song at a time, it might be possible to miss this message. But through the repetition of the motif in each song, the idea becomes engraved on your ears. Just as palm-muted strumming becomes a blending of smashing sound, the most miserable person can find happiness. Joy may have just departed, but it`ll be home soon.