I feel. I have emotions. Sometimes I will get angry. Sometimes I will get sad. And sometimes I will even get extremely excited. Sometimes, when I am feeling any of these things, I will pick up a guitar. Sometimes these emotions will elicit a few words and a melody. Thus, I am inevitably doomed to emo-dom. Right?

No, there are a few other requisites before I can officially be welcomed into the mediocre ranks of the emo-kids. My voice must be intoned with a slight whine, I have to be pleading for my girlfriend to stay because she's in all of my dreams, and I must learn the ingenious and utterly effective juxtaposition of "soft" and "loud." Right? Perhaps. But in the end, one shouldn't automatically dismiss bands that follow the classic emo formula; I mean, Death Cab for Cutie's last record was actually quite delectable for the most part, despite the fact that Benjamin Gibbard's predominantly major-key melodies start to melt together after extended exposure.

So we've established that emo is easily pigeonholed, but not always of terrible quality. But then again, there's definitely a reason why emo has such a bad reputation. Take Boylion's first record for MOC, whose title is derived from the classic cheat code to Konami-brand "game paks" for first generation Nintendo. One could immediately interpret this choice of title to reflect the banal and sophomoric quality of the aural material contained in the microscopic ridges of plastic, and one would be dead on. This is the music of the band that every high school in suburban America seems to have-- five emotional pre-twentysomethings trying to break the punk mold with a bit of melody and keyboard.

The 50 seconds of "Gentle Robots" starts off the record innocuously and even hints at an attempt on experimentalism that aims to remold the inevitable cliché. The instrumental begins with a clean electric guitar strumming, eventually accompanied by some outlandish keyboard arpeggiating, which fades into the second track, "Seton," where not only the experimentalism (if you could even consider it that) fades, but the seedy production enters as well. The song sounds as if it were encoded to MP3 at 98kpbs then mastered, with paper-thin sounding drums, rubbery bass, and an airy, filtered drum track. And how about a serving of high-school science class poetry: "I rush to embrace both you and this moment."

"What Matters Most" kicks off with a double-tracked Matt Roan (as if one were not enough) screaming: "She's begging me to stay." Roan continues his romantically infatuated musings on priorities backed by a speedy one-two beat and a simple, happy-go-lucky organ line. "Find Me" slows things down with a pretty piano and more lines about-- guess what!-- crumbling relationships, then kicks into high gear for the loud and speedy chorus before returning to a super effectual verse with simple harmony vocals.

So, to sum things up, this quartet with a shopping cart full of feelings makes songs with power chords and keyboards and rhythm changes that will make you question what would happen if these kids listened to Miles Davis. It seems that they have perfectly good intentions with those quasi-experimental bleeps and bloops, frenetic tempo and volume changes, and some pretty, yet clichéd, melodies. But in the end, these directions in music are anything but new.

-Christopher F. Schiel, December 11th, 2001