Few groups have as varied a discography as mewithoutYou. They’ve forged a musical niche for themselves that is as diverse as it is consistent. Their records have run the gamut from blistering post-hardcore to intense indie rock to charming folk.

But looking back across eighteen years and seven albums, it can be easy to forget that mewithoutYou (whispers) sorta started out as a joke.

In the early 2000s, Michael Weiss played in a Philadelphia indie rock band called The Operation with guitarist Chris Kleinberg, bassist and lead singer Greg Jehanian, and his brother Aaron on drums.

Their local scene started saw an influx of hardcore and screamo bands and Aaron (who has frequently claimed he doesn’t listen to heavy music) said, “let’s start a band that I can holler to.”

Most of the Operation formed a jokey hardcore band with drummer Rickie Mazzotta and bassist Ray Taddeo (Greg would join later) and chose the floweriest name they could think of. The band would shred through pretty generic hardcore riffs as Aaron frantically yelled poetry and threw himself across the stage.

Their first EP, Blood Enough For Us All found the band neck-deep in irony. On one track, Aaron just performed blood-curdling horror movie screams over a breakdown.

But something funny happened as they riffed and hollered and thrashed about…

People loved it.

The music might have been borderline unlistenable, but their live show gathered attention in a hurry. What started as a joke soon had a huge following. It had too much momentum to abandon.

A few months after debuting, they released I Never Said That I Was Brave. And while many of the same tropes were still present, there was an obvious shift in attitude from the first EP.

In place of the cartoonish screams on Blood, Aaron’s delivery is more shouted—a convention that would become the band’s trademark. That voice isn’t completely developed here, except for the spoken-word section in “Dying is Strange And Hard.” The band still riffs around in drop D, but they experiment with some quieter passages. Two of the songs, the title track and “We Know Who Our Enemies Are” appear on their debut full-length—although the second changed a lot over that year.

But the closing track, “Four Word Letter,” truly shows a glimpse into what the band would become. In the opening verse, Aaron yelps over post-punky clean guitar chords. The band then goes into an ambient jam, building up into a climactic conclusion.

While it might sound unsophisticated and harsh compared to the rest of their discography (even their punky debut full-length [A–>B] Life), I Never Said That I Was Brave offers little wonder that the group would go on to do great things.