Sometimes your friend recommends you an album, and you fall in love with it immediately. Sometimes you hear a song in a film, do some shazam-ing and discover your new favourite band. Sometimes you’re wasting your time in a college study period, reading the wikipedia article for Pluto, and discover that it was named by a little girl called Venetia Phair, and through a few hyperlinks you discover the now disbanded Massachusetts-based rock band The Venetia Fair, named after that same girl.
Strange origin story aside, The Venetia Fair rapidly became one of my favourite bands, and Every Sick Disgusting Thought We’ve Got In Our Brains remains one my all time most-played albums. The Venetia Fair cultivate a strange and addictive sound. Best described as the emo goodness of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge-era My Chemical Romance meets the campy circus-like theatricality of Panic! At The Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, this album still holds up seven years after its release as a fantastic emo-rock romp.
‘Too Late To Dream’ kicks off proceedings with a spine-chilling chord before introducing you to the addictive vocal style of Benny Santoro. Delivering the fantastic lyrics in such a frantic and frenetic style, Santoro never fails to make every song seem fresh and exciting. There is such variety on this album from start to finish, and the stunning range Santoro possesses is a large part of that.
‘The Day I Set Them Free’ has a deliciously catchy chorus, and the jazzy backing trumpets punctuate the cutting bridges of the track. Following that is ‘I: We Used To Worship The Moon’; one of those songs where the singer’s voice is incredibly fun to imitate. The opening line, “I’m losing control here” threads throughout, and each time is wailed more and more desperately and more and more grippingly.
Jumping forward a few tracks to “II: The Dirt Won’t Keep Your Secrets’, we get the most noticeable feature of The Venetia Fair’s biggest tunes; the huge theatrical swells when the chorus approaches. Similar to modern day Creeper, or the choruses of the aforementioned A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, the melodic shouts that carry the breakdown lyrics are sickly-sweet.
While there are no ‘slow songs’ to supply a breather amidst the unrelenting bop-filled circus singalong, there are some incredible ballad-adjacent tracks on this album. ‘VI: I Could End My Search Tonight’ is powerful, and has that memorable heavy feeling that makes a gothic rock song stay with you for years. Similarly, the softly sung opening of ‘III: Go On, Paint Me A Picture’ provides the perfect contrast to the chest-shaking intro of ‘IV: The Saints Of Gomorrah.’
If you have the time to spare, and fancy reliving that glorious period of early 2010s orchestral emo music, absolutely give Every Sick Disgusting Thought We’ve Got In Our Brains a go… and that’s a recommendation that didn’t require an hour of pointless Wikipedia procrastination.
Every Sick Disgusting Thought We’ve Got In Our Brains is available now. Check out the video for ‘The Day I Set Them Free’ below!
2 Comments
Thanks for keeping the Venetia Fair in your playlist!
Ugh I absolutely love this band, and although I just found them recently (thanks to Ice Nine Kills posting The Day I Set them Free on their facebook story) I think their music is absolutely addictive. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one!