I'm Only a Man — Emery

I'm Only a Man is the third album by Emery, the post-hardcore band that started out in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and made its name in Seattle. Tooth & Nail Records released it on October 2, 2007. It's eleven songs in just over forty-eight minutes, and it's the record where Emery turned down the screaming, turned up the keyboards and dared its fans to keep up. Plenty of them didn't. Nearly twenty years on, it's worth hearing again with fresh ears.

How it was made

Emery came off two well-loved albums, The Weak's End in 2004 and The Question in 2005. Then bassist Joel "Chopper" Green left in September 2006, and the band carried on as five. Toby Morrell and Devin Shelton shared lead vocals and split the bass parts between them, Matt Carter played guitar, Josh Head handled keys, programming and screams, and Dave Powell played drums. You can read the full story on the Emery band page.

The members were living in different states by then, so they rented a beach house near Charleston, South Carolina, in late 2006 to write. In the spring of 2007 they recorded at Dark Horse Studios in Franklin, Tennessee. Ryan Boesch, who'd engineered records for the Foo Fighters and The Cure, produced the album with Carter. Emery put four songs online before release, starting with "The Party Song" on July 29, and the whole album leaked four days before it reached stores. It still reached No. 78 on the Billboard 200.

Less guitar, more song

The big change is easy to hear. Carter told Amy Kelly of Ultimate Guitar in January 2008 that "we set out from the beginning to use the least guitar possible." There's only ever one guitar part at a time, and keyboards fill the rest. His rule was simple. "If it doesn't need guitar, don't put it in."

That choice splits the room even now. Lindsay Wiseman at Jesus Freak Hideout admitted that on first listen she agreed with the fans asking "what happened?" She stuck with it, though, and found that "the more listens given to I'm Only a Man, the more treasures are found." Nate at Indie Vision Music gave it 8.5 out of 10. His first thought was "its different," and he warned there was "less screaming. A lot less screaming." He also didn't hide the flaw. The band tracked a lot of parts with single takes and little layering, which gave the album "a more rough, demo-ish feel."

Susanne Martin at Cross Rhythms heard it the other way round. To her it was the band's "most intense, heavy album so far," and she pointed out that the very first line on the record is "This is a waking up."

The songs

"Rock-N-Rule" opens with Shelton, who wrote it. In the album's press biography he said the song "went through a lot of changes" before he settled on "a really heavy, aggressive approach." The hook, "I guess you don't have faith," lands hard, and Head's trumpet sample gives it a strange swagger.

"The Party Song" was the first single and got the official video. It sounds bright, almost bouncy, but it's about friends who numb grief with drugs and drink. Morrell said he wrote it "with Queen or Weezer in mind" and wanted "a simpler, almost happy kind of feeling, although the lyrics are pretty serious." It came partly from his wife, who lost her father at seventeen. The people in the song, he said, "were avoiding the pain instead of addressing it." Wiseman thought the subject matter was "ideal," because so many listeners have tried to talk a friend out of that road.

"After the Devil Beats His Wife" takes its name from the old Southern saying for rain falling while the sun shines, and it's lit up by slide guitar. It's also where the album finally boils over. A user reviewer at Sputnikmusic, writing as Cuban Pete, gave the record just 2 out of 5 and called its songwriting lazy, but even he singled out the song's "final act," with "crashing cymbals, dissonant chords and screaming vocals."

The same reviewer liked the "bizarre" "Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus," which jumps from a Queen-style harmony opening to an electronic chorus and back into screams. Martin thought that mix of dance beats and rock "works surprisingly well." Wiseman was less sure and called it the one song that "feels out of place." The quieter "What Makes a Man a Man" and "Can't Stop the Killer" show off the two singers best, and the ten-minute closer, "From Crib to Coffin," grew out of improvising. "Sometimes we get really bored with two guitars blaring and loud distortion, so that one just kept developing," Morrell said.

The faith underneath

Wiseman noted that the lyrics "are not very spiritual" on the surface, but the title says a lot. She wrote that the album's big theme is "the imperfections of humans, mistakes, and sin." The phrase "I'm only a man" keeps coming back, and in her reading it stands for "the realization that we are not God." She was careful to add that this isn't a free pass. "We shouldn't use our humanity as an excuse to sin, but to use it a tool to learn from." That's a grown-up message for a scene that often loved its own heartbreak, and it sits well beside songs about addiction, regret and broken relationships.

The verdict

I'm Only a Man isn't Emery's best album. The mix is thin in places, a few songs wander, and "From Crib to Coffin" runs longer than it needs to. But the critics who wrote it off as a sell-out missed how brave it was. The band could have made The Question again and chose not to. The two voices are as good as they ever were, "The Party Song" and "Rock-N-Rule" still hit, and "After the Devil Beats His Wife" is one of the best things they ever recorded. The band clearly still cares about it, too. In 2021 they released a full re-recording called I'm Only a Man (Emery's Version). Start with the official video for "The Party Song," then play "After the Devil Beats His Wife" loud.

7/10

If this story helped, you can help keep the paper going: Support the paper.