About nine years ago, a Pedro the Lion fanatic named Calvin added me on MySpace because I looked a little like Aaron Weiss from mewithoutYou (this is true). We became friends through many an AIM chat (nine years ago, remember?) where we discovered that we were both songwriters with a penchant for emo-tinged acoustic music. I was striking out on a solo project after the dissolution of my high school post-hardcore band, he had just started playing Bazan-esque tunes under the name The Foxery. Over time, the Foxery added members and influences until this year when they got signed to Spartan Records and released the emo record of the year, which is no small task in the year that brought the emo revival no one knew we needed.

While Calvin and Co.’s affinity for Pedro the Lion and Brand New has never been shied away from in the Foxery’s catalogue, here they synthesize those influences (and plenty of mewithoutYou and As Cities Burn to boot) in a way that is faithful to the source material without ever feeling derivative. The album is masterfully crafted into one massive work that is far more than the sum of the individual tracks.