When Max Bemis’s ramshackle, personnel-shifting collective Say Anything released their debut album, Baseball: An Album by Say Anything, in 2001, the response was decidedly muted and overall unenthusiastic. It’s not that the songs weren’t good– the exceptionally firebrand performance on “The Last Great Punk Rock Song” is sure to leave a lasting impression– it was that they were underdeveloped. Bemis’s songwriting always lent itself to grandiosity, but he didn’t quite understand how to craft his songs into the mini-epics he wanted them to be.

Bemis, a trained pianist from a young age, started Say Anything in high school, inspired in large part by the fizz-bang of Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool, which he still maintains is his favorite album. EPs like Junior Varsity soon followed, and in the aftermath of their debut, Bemis mostly worked solo from his dorm room in Sarah Lawrence College, producing the Menorah/Majora EP and a collection of demos. Bemis soon dropped out and reunited with Say Anything’s original drummer, Coby Linder, as the band got signed to a deal with the large independent label Doghouse Records.

At this point, I’ve just been paraphrasing …Is A Real Boy‘s Wikipedia page for a good paragraph. But it’s here that things started going off the rails for Bemis. He has acknowledged by now that he’s had a long history of bipolar disorder and severe social anxiety, and the stress of creating this, his breakthrough album, and not only trying to compose and perform every instrument (excluding drums) as well as constructing the lyrics and music to fit into his over-arching concept caused an extended nervous breakdown. The art that he created during this period is irrevocably informed by his mental issues.

…Is A Real Boy is, as a whole, structured around the idea of artists’ desperation to effect change in the world with their art. Within it, Bemis creates compelling portraits of himself, the people around him, and the musical environment he’s surrounded by. The album (as well as its follow-up EP, Was A Real Boy), is a deeply intimate examination of self-loathing, anxiety, depression, lashing out at others, and hunger for success. It is a masterpiece of the emo pop era, and as immaculately constructed as it is, the meticulous arrangements and fussed-over compositions are second to the passionate performances and the emotional rawness of Bemis’s voice. Reading the lyrics of …Is A Real Boy is like reading the caffeine-fueled diary of your suicidal best friend: illuminating, troubling, comforting, profound, and far, far too personal.

Bemis’s lyrics are the soul of …Is A Real Boy. They are immediate, written as if they were a first draft that happened to be perfect. Bemis somehow manages to spill his soul into perfectly expressive pieces, word by word, putting them together to form beautiful turns of phrase and empowering slogans. The words by themselves are gorgeous, but Bemis’s inimitable, frayed vocals make everything pop. They are not conventionally virtuosic, but they carry a tune well enough, and they carry such power that every phrasing, intonation, and inflection leaves its mark. They range from soft, cracked-voice crooning to top-of-the-lungs yelling without skipping a beat, and somehow remain accessible. Bemis is the one of the only songwriters able to engineer perfect moments of catharsis singing along to lyrics about emotional exhaustion and desperation (he is accompanied, for the record, by Pat the Bunny and Blake Schwarzenbach, among others).

The fact of the matter, though, is that the package simply wouldn’t be complete without the actual music. The fact that Bemis wrote and performed nearly every instrument is frankly astounding. The songs are played with almost endless layers, and would be nearing shoegaze territory if they weren’t played with such ferocity. Every melody is introduced and executed with purpose, and nothing is too labored-upon or drawn out for too long, which would be easy to do when the songs are written in such a progressive way (for a pop-punk record, granted). Linder’s drum work is impeccable here, augmenting Bemis’s vocal tics and rhythms as well as carrying the songs in every batshit-crazy direction Bemis could aim them with amazing confidence. The intros to songs like “Alive with the Glory of Love” and “An Orgy of Critics” would completely fall apart if not for Linder’s agile and precise sticksmanship.

And of course, the songwriting itself has grown into its own. Songs are internally consistent while exploring a wide range of territory– for example, “An Orgy of Critics” goes from a Botch-inspired mathcore intro to a hardcore punk verse to a sugary pop chorus and back again, and includes an inventive bridge as well as a noisy-yet-catchy guitar solo, all while sounding completely natural and revolving around a central sonic idea. It is incredibly rare for such a young songwriter to have such a complex and nuanced grasp of dynamics, flow, and melody, especially in what was ostensibly a dinky little punk outfit. In essence, Bemis was a restless talent who had just found his perfect outlet.

The album opens with a neat little microcosm of the record’s anxious energy, in a lo-fi documentation of Bemis’s nervousness over recording the spoken-word introduction. It’s a simple line– “And the record begins with a song of rebellion”– and yet he just can’t bring himself to do it. That is, of course, until we hear him say it in hi-fi definition and the razor-sharp guitar of “Belt” begins, with an almost percussive rhythm. The song flows in odd directions, but seems committed to one, traditional structure, until it breaks down for an absolutely explosive bridge, featuring gang vocals and an absolutely anthemic performance from Bemis.

After the high-energy punkiness of “Belt,” we are treated to the lazy, idiosyncratic intro to “Woe,” which is perhaps the thesis statement of the record. Not only does the song evolve from its oddball pop opening into a keyboard-laden, forceful piece de resistance with ease and swagger, Bemis lays out almost all of the lyrical themes covered on the record– painful self-awareness, sexual insecurity, his faux-ironically-detached relationship with his band, the perceived insincerity of those around him, and especially his own shortcomings and battles with himself. The cute “la-da”s that permeate the track lend it accessibility but do not mask the intense psychodrama Bemis plays out lyrically, and it displays Say Anything’s classic ability to hide the song’s slowly mounting tension until it releases at the end.

“The Writhing South” is just as powerfully constructed and performed as any other song on the record, although its main appeal lies not in the lyrics (I particularly like “I’ve got these last twelve bucks to spend on you/You can take me anywhere your sick mind wants to”), but in its intensely progressive song structure– the conclusion of the song is mind-bending as far as pop-punk goes, featuring tempo changes and loopy rhythms galore. Although it is a great song on its own, it exists mostly as an obstacle between the album-defining “Woe” and the crowd-pleaser “Alive with the Glory of Love.”

“Alive” is one of those songs that tells an incredibly compelling story, illustrated with both emotion and loving detail. As is common knowledge by now, it is the tale of Bemis’s grandparents surviving the Holocaust and finding love together, but what makes it work is how easily Bemis inserts himself into the story, exploring every detail in ways that would probably make anyone else’s skin crawl– who else would be willing to discuss the Nazis collecting the golden fillings of people’s teeth, or to take on his grandfather’s persona while “screw[ing] the day away” with his grandmother, hiding from SS officers? Bemis is willing to plumb the depths of these situations in order to find the pearls of emotional honesty inside of them, and he isn’t afraid to drench himself in filth and dirt to do so.

A prime example of this is “Yellow Cat/Red Cat,” which is as moving and intimate a character study as George Saunders has ever written. What makes Bemis such an interesting writer is that he treats himself with the same mixture of empathy and disdain that he has for each of the characters he examines, to the point where observing his neighbor’s kid play with a shotgun in the street is as incidental as his passive disgust with himself for doing nothing but getting stoned and eating all day. Bemis displays both pity and understanding for his cousin, who feels superior to others by laughing at hip-hop videos on MTV, because he does nothing and thus has no one else to feel superior to. Again, Bemis is willing to take the plunge into potentially icky territory with his sketch of the man who wants “to see someone he respects without his clothes… like some hybrid mother-slash-lover.” The mournful keyboard line and occasional dip into noise– in contrast to the mostly laid-back, melancholic atmosphere of the song– augment Bemis’s outbursts and observations.

“The Futile” is one of the most lyrically brutal songs on the album, both towards others and towards Bemis himself, perhaps second only to “Every Man Has A Molly” and “Admit It!!” Bemis lashes inward and outward in equal measure at multiple points through the album, but this song includes Bemis ranting about his competitors/opponents’ “artful abortions of sound,” and condemns their irony while being perfectly aware of his hypocrisy. He’ll pretend to “go with the ignorance,” but he knows for a fact he’s full of it. It’s the shortest, most aggressive song on the album, and it still manages to express an exemplary understanding of dynamics.

“Spidersong” is a beautifully creepy look at Bemis’s sexual anxieties (how else could “crawl inside her” be read?) and it also boasts the dubious honor of having the catchiest chorus about feeling like you’re a creep for getting a girl to sleep with you. At the end of the day, Bemis still castigates himself for attempting to write a romantic song but being too damn lazy to do anything about it. “Spidersong” neatly segues into “An Orgy of Critics,” which I’ve already complimented enough, but it needs to be restated that it’s a masterpiece of aggression, catchiness, and complexity.

“Every Man Has A Molly” is one of Say Anything’s trademark songs, and it’s for a very good reason– it’s a postmodern commentary on the fact that every lovelorn pop-punk song about a girl has to have a real girl behind it, and what happens when that girl finds out the songs are about her? Aesthetically, “Molly” sounds like the Song That Got Away from Weezer’s Pinkerton, but lyrically, Bemis is far more honest with himself about his shortcomings than Rivers Cuomo ever could be, through the rhetorical device of his own obliviousness. His flair for the dramatic as well as lyrical dissonance comes through in the chorus, proclaiming he’d kill himself over this girl over jaunty handclaps. Bemis also continues his trend of pretending to be ironically detached from his band (“You goddamn kids had best be gracious with the merch money you spend”) but at the end his passion for sincerity and authenticity bleeds through, being nothing but forthright about Molly Connelly (who is, apparently, based on two girls). Bemis’s self-loathing seems to reach its apex here on the record (for now), which is why his ire and concern is mostly projected onto others in the next two tracks.

“Passing Slowly Through A Vector” is a song about watching a friend succumb to drug addiction, and Bemis writes about it in the most dark, disturbing manner possible. In the eerie, off-kilter bridge, Bemis discusses the way that his friend’s drug problem has captured and devoured them, leaving Bemis to pick up whatever pieces are left. It’s a powerful moment that directly addresses the way addiction destroys friendships, and the commentary takes a sharply positive turn in his call-and-response “show me what you got” routine that closes the song; it’s one of the few songs on the record that combines genuine hopefulness with its macabre subject matter.

“Chia-Like, I Shall Grow” is made up entirely of invective. If Bemis hadn’t convinced you already of his “flamethrower mouth,” he more than amply compensates here, absolutely destroying the phoniness of the culture he sees around him. Bemis has a bit of a Holden Caulfield complex throughout the entire record, but his paranoia shines the most here; he was probably in the same state of mind while performing this song as he was when he was spitting in old ladies’ bowls of soup. In any case, the guitar work on “Chia-Like” is absolutely mesmerizing, and endlessly interesting to listen to. Musically, it’s one of the more intricate songs, with melodies bleeding into one another and very gripping movements through each segment of the song.

As we move towards the album’s finale, we are faced with its denouement, the emotionally devastating “I Want To Know Your Plans.” I have a deep emotional attachment to this song which, honest to God, makes it a little hard for me to talk about. I could analyze it in-depth as I have for every other song here, but that would be disingenuous of me. I will say that when I saw Say Anything perform this live in Chicago for the tenth-anniversary tour of this record, I wept, openly, while leaning on the shoulder of a stranger who was also crying. It is one of the most affecting, soulful songs I have ever heard in my life, and I’m a jaded fuck-up who has dealt with a lot of Serious Shit™. No song has ever made me cry like that when performed live.

Moving on, we have the original album closer, “Admit It!!” This is my all time favorite Say Anything song, and I believe the first one from this album I ever listened to, after mildly enjoying “The Last Great Punk Rock Song” and not seeking out any more of their material. When this album came out, Say Anything were really straddling the line between the DIY scene and the more streamlined scene that Fall Out Boy and the like were propagating at the time– they were liked and loathed in equal measure by both. I would argue that this song’s success is not just in their rebuke of cliche early 00s hipsterism, but also in the fact that Bemis condemns himself equally. This is also why “Admit It Again” sucks so much– his allegiances changed and it appeared that he lost a lot of the self-awareness that made him such a compelling and honest songwriter in the first place. Nevertheless, “Admit It!!” is an absolute treat to listen to. Bemis’s lyrical acrobatics are delivered at a frantic pace, and the conclusion is gut-wrenching and soulful. If you only ever listen to one song from …Is A Real Boy, a strong argument could be made for it being “Admit It!!”

Of course, after this album dropped, it became an underground sensation, which led to the record being rereleased on the major label RCA, with the Was A Real Boy EP constituting bonus tracks. Most of these sound like underproduced, underdeveloped songs that were scrapped from the album proper, except for the opener “Wow! I Can Get Sexual Too!” which is a pitch-perfect encapsulation of Bemis’s nerdy sexual frustration, in that it also coalesces with his self-conscious creepiness and his deep, deep self-loathing. Add the fact that it showcases Bemis’s unconventionally catchy voice paired with a bizarre, dancey beat, and the song became kind of a novelty hit, exposing Say Anything to the mainstream world.

The rest is history. Max Bemis is an institution in the scene. Whether it’s making expansive, smart records like In Defense of the Genre and Hebrews with Say Anything (we don’t talk about Anarchy, My Dear), or collaborating with his hero, Saves the Day’s Chris Conley, in the deceptively cute indie rock outfit Two Tongues, Bemis has proven himself a more-than-capable songwriter.

However, it’s become an accepted fact that he never again reached the heights of his masterpiece, …Is A Real Boy. A large part of the record’s appeal is how hungry Bemis sounds on the record– he’s ready to kill for his fame, despite struggling with his own conflicting feelings about the culture surrounding him. For me, however, the record’s draw has been how deeply personal Bemis is, allowing the audience to see him at his ugliest. After making this album, Bemis was institutionalized and caused Say Anything to drop off a number of tours and shows due to his mental issues, due in no small part to the stress of making the record. It is this fractured mindset that Bemis is relaying here, and I personally find the record relatable on an almost primal level. Just read this essay over: I begin trying to stay objective, but it’s impossible for me not to talk about myself as I go on. My connection to this record is an intense one, as it is for many people.

So sure, maybe Max will never again write an album as good as …Is A Real Boy. But at this point, I wouldn’t want him to try.