Out & About

Honesty can be a tricky or even dangerous thing to possess and to use in your everyday life, depending on how you choose to use it. For example, look at the protagonist of Albert Camus' The Stranger. He shoots a man--ostensibly in self-defense--during a scuffle, and has enough witnesses and quiet racial bias (he is a Frenchman in Algeria when France ruled Algeria) on his side to walk away from the incident without telling a single falsehood. Yet he chooses to avoid the obvious answers and facts under questioning, instead reveling in an alternate honesty that exemplifies the worst in man and nature. Later, delving into this side of himself, he goes on a date the day after his mother dies and flippantly breaks up with the woman who loves him dearly. He is so enchanted by this new version of honesty--doing everything that society shudders at--that he enjoys it when he's called the antichrist by the chief prosecutor. On the way to the death chamber, he is not afraid but rather thinks, "I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."For River City High, and other bands like it, honesty is their stock and trade. And it's just as complex an idea as in The Stranger. They play what is generally described as emo-punk, which is probably most associated with Hot Water Music (whom River City High sound like to quite a degree) and to a lesser extent Leatherface and Dillinger 4. The genre is defined by a produced but no-frills sound: stripped-down drums and base to create a solid rhythm section buoyed by fuzzed and droning guitars high in treble. The vocals drip with emotion and are best delivered throaty, much like the vocalists of River City High and the other aforementioned bands. The music and delivery are somewhat formulaic, so the biggest difference in this game is what you say.

On the two CDEPs River City High released in 2000, Richmond Hotel and Forgets Their Manners, the songs speak, sometimes vaguely and sometimes desperately, of trying to find a chink of hope in the wall of despair. On the latter's "'Til It Hurts," the grim state of affairs reads, "Everything falls apart it doesn't seem right/I take it personally and out of spite/Avoid the truth not to be cynical/Being right means beating your head against the wall." Can't really crack a smile in that situation. On their earlier EP Anybody, Anywhere, the remaining glimmer of hope that hasn't been viciously stomped into the turf tries to fight through. Late at night, "sitting under the closed sign, I'll let this empty street speak for me/'Cause I feel just about this lonely/Out here, there has to be someone who understands, who's searching just like me/I hope I find someone who feels the way I do." Ugly as it may seem, you have to look at the absolute hell that can envelop your life and then fucking deal with it. How's that for honesty?