Veteran emo and post-hardcore bands Say Anything and mewithoutYou are on tour together this spring. In celebration of that, the two bands decided to record each other's favorite songs—Say Anything covered "Torches Together," their favorite mewithoutYou track, and retitled it "Torches Apart.“ And mewithoutYou covered Say Anything's "Cemetery," added a few lyrics from "Baby Girl, I'm A Blur," and called it "Cleo's Ferry Cemetery."
"This was the first song I ever heard or fell in love with recorded by my friends in mewithoutYou," Say Anything frontman Max Bemis wrote to The FADER in an email. "Getting to know Aaron, along with my admiration for his lyrics and the way he lives his life growing over the years, has made him a sort of philosophical idol of mine. However, I often see myself as too flawed and messed up to measure up (Aaron, always humble, wouldn't agree). I altered the song to imprint my tendency towards cynicism and self destruction as a comment on how beautiful and inspiring the original is. Just call it the 'Bum Out Remix.'"
"The original version of 'Cemetery' embodies what I love about Say Anything: vividly corporal, emotionally confrontational, self-deprecating, brutally honest, cynical/dark while weirdly hopeful, etc," explained mewithoutYou's Aaron Weiss. "He sings way better than I can, so why bother covering his song outright? Better to do something our own, even if it’s inferior, at least it’s not only inferior. Cobbling together lines of Max’s, lines of mine, a Morrissey lyric, it’s harder to know who gets credit if it turns out well, who’s to blame if it fails, probably accounting for the somewhat-less-anxiety-ridden-than-usual song production process. All this plus we can recommend a visit to Cleo’s Ferry Museum in Melba, Idaho—a partial-cure place, I think, for what ails 'people' like me and Max.“
Listen to both covers below, and find more details about the tour here. The split will be available as a tour-only 7-inch.