Beyond finding the music almost entirely devoid of enjoyability, part of the reason "Sugar, We're Going Down" leaves me cold is how much the lyrical stance differs from my own concept of adolescence. When it came to girls, I was a painfully shy romantic with a tendency to place 'em on pedestals - Sebadoh and Weezer were my totems. This current emo brigade seems a lot more sexed but a lot less sweet. It's not entirely a bad thing (it's not like I want kids to grow up like I did and maybe if 90s music was a little less reticent about discussing non-idealistic co-ed interaction I might have tried more), but awkward poetry about using and being used by jezebels is a kind of post-feminist sour grapes that I can't get behind. If dudes are going to cop to pragmatic hurt-me-hurt-you assholery, they shouldn't be writing in cursive.