I’m not sure anything contributed more to my music taste than Deep Elm’s Emo Is Awesome, Emo Is Evil compilation (maybe Songs From the Penalty Box 4, but that’s a different story). Like many a Millennial youth, I grabbed a copy after seeing it next to the register at Hot Topic. I didn’t recognize a single name on the tracklist, but it introduced me to a group of bands that showed just how diverse emo could be, like Red Animal War, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Logh, Benton Falls, the Appleseed Cast (still an all time favorite), and so many more.

Lewis was on that compilation, but their contribution didn’t grab me. I mostly ignored them until I got a copy of Even So in a $1 Random CD sale the label was having. It didn’t take much convincing for that disc to join my regular listening rotation.

As mentioned, one of the big takeaways from that compilation was the sheer diversity of emo.  I was already familiar with the more cathartic post-hardcore and cleverly catchy sides of the genre, and had in fact been moving on from those types of bands in ‘05/06  when I received this CD. I had recently started college and was diving into more “serious” music like Sigur Ros, Radiohead, the Mars Volta, and Explosions in the Sky. And so when I heard Lewis, who was supposed to be an emo band, I was surprised to find that it felt far more like the music I was getting into than the genre I was abandoning.

While Lewis is in fact an emo band, their sonic palette borrows an awful lot from post rock and alt rock. Guitars are primarily clean, utilizing reverb more often than distortion. Bass and drums are more laid back than the typical emo rhythm section, anchoring the songs’ spiraling structures more than pushing them forward. Most notable though is the heavy use of a Wurlitzer electric piano, which is a rarity in that scene.

From the opening figure of “The Cruelest Days,” it’s clear that this isn’t going to be a clone of Thursday or Taking Back Sunday. There’s more than enough to keep this in the emo camp, but it’s a different side of the genre than what might typically come to mind. The guitars spiral around eachother similarly to the work of Sunny Day Real Estate or Mineral, but the bursts of distortion that punctuates those bands are almost entirely absent. Rather, it exists closer to where the roots of emo, post rock, and math rock tangle around one another. There are flashes of Appleseed Cast,  and American Football,  as well as the more experimental side of Unwound. While my point of reference is broad enough now to recognize it as emo, my eighteen-year-old self categorized it more in line with Radiohead, Saxon Shore, The Gloria Record, and more of the “grown up” stuff I was getting into. As such, it became a fixture of my listening habits. So when it finally receives a vinyl pressing, there’s no way I could resist.