Two Tongues is a col­lab­or­a­tion between Max Bemis of ‘Say Any­thing’ and Chris Con­ley of ‘Saves the Day’. Being a huge fan of both the bands I was very excited about the release of these thir­teen tracks; and I am not disappointed.

Bemis and Con­ley share writ­ing, vocal and gui­tar duties. Bemis brings his trade­mark venom­ous vocal styl­ing to the mix but it is Con­ley who truly shines; with a sound remin­is­cent of ‘In Reverie’.

Bemis describes the album as an ‘expres­sion of the Yin and the Yang; how two “oppos­ite” souls stim­u­late and battle each other in any truly lov­ing rela­tion­ship.’ and that is cer­tainly the impres­sion that you get from listen­ing to it. The lyr­ics to some of the songs are ambigu­ous as to whether the two are singing to each other or about another unvoiced person.

The writ­ing is con­sist­ently strong, soul­ful and mildly dis­turb­ing at times with both bands’ influ­ences instantly recog­nis­able. The music is strong through­out although the more exper­i­mental songs do make you wish that they had stepped out­side their safety zones on more of the tracks.

Over­all this is a bril­liant effort with some truly great gui­tar riffs and lyr­ics that will rattle around your head for days after­wards; both Bemis and Con­ley excel in their writ­ing and per­form­ance of these songs, it just never quite reaches the level of bril­liance of ‘…Is a Real Boy’ or ‘Stay What You Are’.

Stand out track: If I Could Make You Do Things

Click the link to buy Two Tongues from Amazon.