"Red Paint," The Promise Ring, 1996

"I was sad enough last Saturday,

I woke you to talk but you didn't have much to say."

I will always treasure those first two Promise Ring albums. Yes, nostalgia is a powerful thing, but so is damn good music. 90s indie rock. My favorite type of music.  

"Red Paint" from The Promise Ring's awesome debut, 30 Degrees Everywhere, opens with its immediate bouncing bass and palm muted power chords. Davey von Bohlen's vocals are free verse poetry confessions. He sings something about Cherry Cokes. Together, Davey, guitars, bass, drums all ascend into an eruption into what would be the chorus if this were a traditional song format.

But that's the thing. Promise Ring songs don't always fall into the verse-chorus-verse format. Sometime there are no choruses. The song structures lay the template for the emo uprising of the early 00's. But don't blame The Promise Ring for that. Songs like "Red Paint" stand up for all that could have been great with aggressive non-traditional structure indie rock paired with emotional and poetic lyrics. 

Here is where this all works.