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It’s not exactly headline news but bears pointing out: The band Story of the Year set themselves apart from the screamo pack with one very interesting distinction.
Unlike pretty much every other band of their ilk, few of their songs are about girl troubles.
“Personally? I definitely feel like just there’s so many other things to sing about other than girls,” says singer Dan Marsala, from a tour stop in New Hampshire. “I grew up listening to a lot of political punk bands, not to say that we’re a political band, but I grew up listening to songs about change, about motivating yourself to do things that are positive with your life.
“So we have a lot of songs about our band dynamic and our personal relationships with each other, but that’s about it.”
If that’s the case, the band’s members have years of history from which to draw, having formed in the ’90s as a Deftones-like hardcore act with the goofy moniker Big Blue Monkey.
A few EPs (and lineup changes) later, the band had become Story of the Year, set up camp in Southern California and caught the attention of producer John Feldmann, who hooked them up with Maverick Records.
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In 2003, the band released full-length Page Avenue (a reference to their hometown of St. Louis, Mo.), following it last year with In the Wake of Determination, a disc that solidifed its emo-heavy, post-grunge sound.
The group also got a crash course in the more disillusioning aspects of the music industry.
“Being in a band, as soon as you start touring, you learn ... how fake some stuff is and how some bands are really just there to make money,” he says. “They’ll actually sit down and say, ‘We’re writing for the radio, so we need a verse-chorus-verse song that can’t be over four minutes long and can’t stray from this one particular format.’ ”
Luckily, Story of the Year’s label was willing to let the band venture in whatever direction it wanted, with little to no interference, Marsala says. The ensuing upshift in popularity has sent them on Warped Tours, a spot on the Taste of Chaos bill with idols The Deftones and a tour with Hawthorne Heights that stops at Burton Cummings Theatre on Thursday.
All that time on the road helped foster a healthy relationship with fans. Marsala says it’s also given him some ideas about branching out into uncharted lyrical territories — particularly the more social/political themes of bands he grew up listening to.
“I would like to do that at some point, although I don’t know if this will be the right band to do it in,” he says, noting there’s been a glut of politic rock lately. “But, yeah, I love stuff like that. Anything that can help change the world.”
Get tickets for Thursday’s show at Ticketmaster (780-3333 or www.ticketmaster.ca) for $25.50 and $28.50.