I Don't Think It Is

On <i>I Don’t Think It Is</i>, iconoclastic bandleader Max Bemis is the emo Kanye West, stretching the stylistic boundaries of his genre, vacillating between tender personal revelation and self-aggrandisement. Opener “Give a Damn” is a fist-pumping, noise-blasting rejection of authority, while the delicately barbed “The Bret Easton Ellis School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” takes on a former punk friend gone yuppie. Harder in sound than their previous albums—mixing in mathy post-hardcore, straightforward anthemic emo and even some hip-hop—this may be Say Anything's most sharp and ambitious work to date.