You Blew It! packs blame and humor into 'Keep Doing What You're Doing'

Society always celebrates the records that top the Billboard 200 album chart. Back of The Billboards is a Music Times weekly segment that looks at the opposite end: the new record that finished closest to the back of the Billboard 200 for the previous week. We hope to give a fighting chance to the bands you haven't heard of.

Week of 01/24/2013

WHO: You Blew It!

WHAT: Keep Doing What You're Doing

SPOT: 198

There's a dose of humor in everything that You Blew It! does. You may have noticed the exclamation point in the band's title, or absurd song titles such as "Award of The Year Award." Some of lyrics even sound like vocalist Tanner Jones is just losing track of things to say. It's funny, but like much great humor, there's a layer of depression underneath it.

The bitterness in Jones' lyrics isn't exactly subliminal. Each of the tracks on Keep Doing What You're Doing serves as a castigation for one or multiple wrongdoers. At the same time, Jones isn't shy about letting listeners know that much of these disagreements are petty. Consider, from "Strong Island": "I'm not sure what I'm blaming you for but it'll probably be too late to make it better." Coupled with the song's discussions of video games, it seems that the album comes from a high-school perspective.

Having once been an overly-emotional teenager, we can safely diagnose the bitter humor and occasional rambling rants of the protagonist on Keep Doing What You're Doing as being someone who's full of angst for the sake of being full of angst, and odds are the enemies featured in these tracks suffer from the same condition.

The difference is that Jones is being honest about his emotional turmoil, and the fact that sometimes he can't figure out who's wrong. Rather than being too melodramatic to handle, You Blew It! is emotionally-honest emo.