Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#16 Low, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#113 Thursday, FULL COLLAPSE

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s from @rachelalison.bksy.social and it’s for FULL COLLAPSE. Take it away, Rachel!

I didn't mean to write an Emo-Hater's Guide to Thursday's Full Collapse. First of all Thursday deserve better than that. You deserve better than that. You deserve a blurb
written by someone with a Thursday dove tattoo and warm memories of how this band made them feel seen when they were a 17-year-old girl. I was a 17-year-old girl
when Full Collapse was released. The ideal demographic. Couldn't stand the shit.

Smarmy essays brimming with barely-concealed loathing belong back in the early 2000's alongside TV Without Pity and Livejournal. And Full Collapse.

Instead you're getting me. I'm sorry.

My Emo-Hater bonafides are:
- Any time a friend would play me a 2000's emo song, I would ask "Is this the ‘At Your Funeral' guys?" I could Google who that band is for this DC. I will not. Not
out of contrarian haterade but because I HAVE Googled who that band is at least half a dozen times and the information falls out of my head approximately 10 seconds
later. Is it Fall Out Boy? Panic(?) I will never know.
- The only times I saw third-wave emo bands live during their heyday were because a friend dragged me there. I was so drunk at Jimmy Eat World I got kicked out of the arena. Too drunk for an arena show. I have absolutely no memory of the My Chemical Romance show I attended in 2005 or 2006. I am told I had a good time. Probably because I was drunk.
- An acquaintance demanded I listen to Full Collapse because it was so "me". I made it to track 3 before I yanked out the CD and told the friend that it was fucking insulting. What had I done to deserve being conflated with someone with a voice like a mosquito net?
- My loathing was based on gut instinct and not out of an aversion to the uncool nature of "emo". I hadn't even heard the word emo the first time I heard Thursday. This was hatred in a vacuum uninfluenced by Pitchfork or Spin.

Okay you get it. So why the fuck is a dead-souled cunty fucker like me writing a DC for Full Collapse? Because (christ this sentence is painful) Thursday is important.
Goddamnit I don't like it either. If Geoff Rickly doesn't throw sweaty loud post-hardcore shows in the basement of his home in Jersey, a lot of bands don't exist in
the format we know them. My Chemical Romance. Senses Fail. Armor for Sleep. Aspects of The Used's sound. Maybe you like some of those bands. Maybe you don't. But in 2026 when rock as a genre is dead and music is made by robots I am team More Bands. More Art. More Humans Getting Together in a Fucking Garage/Basement/ Abandoned Building and Creating Shit. Even if it's not my personal cup of tea.

So what you're gonna wanna do if you're a hater listening to Full Collapse for the first time is skip track 1 and go straight to track 2. Track 1 is some incomprehensible rambling about robots or some shit.

Track 2 - "Understanding in a Car Crash.” The single that made a lot of people notice the band for the first time. It's a song Geoff Rickly wrote about the road-accident death of one of his friends who was driving to come hang out with him. (His girlfriend at the time was also in the car and sustained serious injuries.) His subject is coupled up with the substance abuse Rickly turned to during this terrible time in his life. A bit like how screaming of certain lines is coupled up with melodic singing. It's the signature Thursday bit and nearly never works as well as it does in this song.

There's a Neil Young reference in the line The needle and the damage done which I appreciate. He gets proper poetic in the bridge:

Spinning hubcaps set the tempo
For the music of the broken window
Cameras on and the cameras click
We open up the lens and can't stop

I also dig the drums in this track. I don't know anything about anything but Tucker Rule can bang the shit out some drums.

Track 3 - "Concealer". Any novelty to be found in the screaming lines paired with sung is already getting tired. Full Collapse suffers from not-great track ordering in my opinion. Why? Because "Concealer" is arguably one of the best songs on the album (at least lyrically) and my ears are too tired after "...Car Crash” to give it the space it deserves. "Concealer" is a song about domestic abuse done in a way that would make The Dixie Chicks proud. Angry, first-person pain resolves into menacing threats of revenge. I can be a hater and still love this song.

Track 4 - "Autobiography of a Nation". Dear god what a dreary bassline. The kind of bassline that A Perfect Circle would reject. Or Creed would love. But lyrically I
can't say a word against it.

Track 5 - "A Hole in the World'. A place to let your eats rest. Mercifully little screaming until near the end of the track. Hydrate. Relax your jaw.

Track 6 - "Cross Out the Eyes". Relaxation over. Skip this song if you hate screaming because this is like 650% screaming and dear god my ears are bleeding. Unfortunately it is one of the singles and popular with Thursday fans so hang in if you can.

Drums are still great though. Maybe I'm just a Tucker Rule fan.

Track 7 - "Paris in Flames". My favorite song on Full Collapse. But Rachel, you hate the screaming. There is so much screaming in this? Make it make sense. Kay. It's a song about LGBT issues on a rock record. In two-thousand-casual-f-slur-using-one. Remember that time? This song was so anti-butt rock, so anti-alpha-dude-bro in an era when that was absolutely not the Done Thing. I couldn't stand Thursday yet I Limewire'd (or IRC'd or whatever’d) this song AND kept it in my Winamp playlist where my college roommates could See Me Listening to Thursday. The screaming feels earned on this track in the way it does on "Understanding in a Car Crash'. Yeah dude. Scream it out. It's 2001 and George Bush wants to legislate that marriage is only between a man and a woman and gay people shouldn't be allowed to adopt. It's 2026 and anti trans legislation is everywhere. We should all be screaming more actually.

Track 8 - More dreary basslines and screaming. Maybe make a sandwich.

Track 9 - "Standing on the Edge of Summer". Eat your sandwich and relax. This track is popular with Thursday fans.

Track 10 - "Wind Up". Not even Thursday like this song. Cheer up, we're almost done.

Track 11 - "How Long is the Night?" Another song about the death of someone in Rickly's life. I'm far from an expert but I feel like he gets the most interesting lyrically when processing personal tragedies versus when talking about Issues. Don't get me wrong, I like politics in my music. It's what made Thursday stand out against a sea of White Guys Whinging About Women. But there's something almost Trent Renor in Rickly's ability to open his veins in a song then sew them back together again. I admire that ability.

Track 12 -We're done! You did it!

I know you're gonna go vote for the other artist. I certainly cannot do a good job of persuading anyone to love Thursday because I do not love Thursday. But I do respect Thursday. I respect Thursday so much I wrote Baby's First Designated Cheerleader after years of only passively voting in these tournaments. I respect what they're about as a band. Pick people up when they fall down. Politics belong in punk music. Women should get to love this genre without being battered with misogyny every other song.

I respect how much Geoff Rickly gave back to his fellow artists. And he produced My Chemical Romance's first album. A band I, yes, love. Me the Emo-Hater. I fucking love My Chemical Romance now more in my perimenopausal 40's than I ever did in the 2000's. On a whim I saw them live at Dodger Stadium in 2025 and lost my fucking mind. And this time I was (California) sober.

Thanks Geoff Rickly. You deserve better than me.

Thank you, Rachel!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #32 Mary J. Blige, NO MORE DRAMA defeated #97 Stars of the Lid, THE TIRED SOUNDS OF STARS OF THE LID, 140-65-1.

Thanks,

Kent