Max Bemis, lead singer and guitarist for Say Anything, knows the band’s first shot at an album needed a little work.

“It was a really shitty album,” he says. “It sucked.”

After the release of an online EP, however, things started picking up for the group. Bemis says it was a turning point for the band, and the time had come to try recording an album again.

Bemis says the second time wasn’t any easier than the first. He then made the decision to write an album about writing an album — by venting his frustrations into a rock opera.

“It came up because of the things in my life,” Bemis says. “I was having a tough time making the record. I decided to write something about trying to make a record — as a character.”

The story told in Say Anything’s second album, “Is a Real Boy,” follows the life of a band struggling to be original, Bemis says. The band gets a curse on it, and when it feels threatened, it gets a special superpower.

Bemis says the album ends in his own death, but with a lesson.

“It’s about coming into life and pride and knowing that you are human and being satisfied with knowing how things are in life,” he says. “It’s about coming to terms with all the shit in your life like insecurity.”

The last track on the album, “Admit it,” is filled with hatred of underground elitists, and Bemis says this attack is meant to release people from their social restraints.

“It’s a sick dictatorship,” Bemis says. “In the real underground — it doesn’t apply to anyone. It’s just this club for rich kids. And I want to be able to relate to everyone.”

Bemis is the son of a writer and an artist. His father, Peter, did the artwork for “Is a Real Boy.”

Even with all these intentions, the album never quite made it into the “rock opera” genre. Bemis says the dialogue between tracks was never fully realized, and the music sort of spoke for itself.

When everything is said and done, Bemis says, he wants the album to incite people to go beyond what they may label themselves.

“The album ends with saying, ‘You have to empower yourself,” he says. “You have to go beyond your social restraints.”

Bemis says even he has become enlightened with the creation of “Is a Real Boy.”

“It made me grow up,” he says, “and I just want to capture that for everyone.”

Who: Say Anything

Where: House of Bricks, 3839 Merle Hay Road, Des Moines

When: 5 p.m. Saturday

Cost: $12