Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness

One Liner: Emo electronic indie pop
Wikipedia Genre: Alternative rock, pop punk, indie rock
Spotify Says Similar To: Vinyl Theatre and The Format
Home: Dana Point, CA

Poster Position: 10
Slot: ?

Thoughts:  Quite a name for the band, right?  Odd to use his name but also add a qualifier. His bio says that he was the front-man for a band called Something Corporate, and then another called Jack's Mannequin, before doing his own thing with this new moniker.  I'm guessing Something Corporate was an emo band, because this guy very much sounds like an emo alt rock singer who is now doing things over electronic pop.  His top track, by far the most listens in his song list on Spotify with 33.4 million, is called "Cecilia and the Satellite."

Big song, very sweet.  I want to read my baby girl toddler a book of charcoal drawings while I sing to her about being the sky to my satellite.  But I'm reading the video to mean that mom died, so maybe I don't want to do that.  Actually, I know I don't want to do that for real, because we don't have babies or toddlers anymore and going back to that stage of child rearing might actually kill me.  I'll just go home and play Star Wars: Battlefront with my son tonight and imagine that I'm reading him a very special book of special drawings and telling him that I'll always be there for him.  Best of all worlds.  Very special.
But, that song is more of a true emo indie track, not the more electronic stuff I have advertised to you here.  So, I bring you his third most popular track right now, "So Close," which comes from the new 2017 album Zombies on Broadway.

Dammit, I'm a big softie in my old age.  That video was very endearing and made me giggle and grin.  I wanna have a space-suit danceoff in Brooklyn!  The song is definitely catchy electronic pop that I could see being extremely fun to jam out to with a big group.  I think I'd be required to jump when the chorus kicks in.  Or at least churn the butter in a very large and exaggerated manner.  I really dig that song.
Some of the other stuff from the 2017 album, like "Brooklyn, You're Killing Me," reminds me of the bad rap-ish rock thing that 21 Pilots is doing these days, and as such I don't enjoy it at all. But a lot of the songs on there are trying less hard, like "So Close" and "Fire Escape" or "Don't Speak for Me (True)," and I find myself enjoying them.  The older album is less interesting to me, but has an interesting chameleonic thing going on with the vocals - Sometimes, his voice sounds like The Killers' guy ("Driving Through a Dream"), or the Weezer guy ("Rainy Girl"), and other times more like the Muse guy.  

If this were an album I was just checking out, I think I'd likely save a track or two into a playlist and keep enjoying them, but let the rest of the album go.  So I don't guess I'm entirely sold on going to see him play in the Fall, but I like some of these songs quite a bit.