Emo kid that I was, I’ve discovered the last few years that there’s a fair amount of the genre that I missed. Obviously I was aware of early pioneers like Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral, but that was through turn-of-the-millennium bands like Further Seems Forever, The Juliana Theory and twothirtyeight. I was a big Jimmy Eat World fan, but I was far more familiar with Bleed American than Clarity.

I say this to explain that even though Christie Front Drive have been cult favorites among Second Wave emo fans, I had given very little playtime before buying this LP on the strength of their reputation alone.

And let me tell you what: 16-year-old Nat would have eaten this record up.

My emo journey started in earnest on my fifteenth birthday, when I dragged my family to a music store while on vacation in Florida and purchased Understand This is a Dream, Emotion is Dead by The Juliana Theory and Dashboard Confessional’s The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most. I devoured those albums for months, eventually reaching out to their earlier albums (and earlier bands, in the case of Chris Carrabba). I tracked down a copy of both Further Seems Forever From the 27th State split with Recess Theory and The Juliana Theory’s split with Dawson High. Both discs had a raw earnestness that transcended the rough production, somewhat pitchy vocals, and decidedly unrefined instrumental performances.

Those qualities are fully present on Christie Front Drive’s sole LP. It would be a stretch to call this punk, but punk’s raw ethos injects itself into every second of this record, even at lower volumes and slower tempos. “Saturday” opens the record with a hushed, morose pair of nearly post-rock intertwining guitar parts, the drums playing as little as they can. After nearly three minutes, the rhythm picks up and the guitars shift into a major key, finally introducing the vocals. After a single verse, feedback swells and the band explodes into a soaring chorus. After another verse and chorus, the cycle is broken by an instrumental passage that’s not quite a hardcore breakdown, but it fills the same role and feels similar.

These ingredients inform the primary flavor palette of the album: guitars shift from sparkling cleans to bursts of distortion. The drums move between angular grooves and cymbal-heavy walls of noise. The bass is more melodic than rhythmic, jumping up the scale without concern for running into the guitar lines (and let’s be honest, none of these emo kids knew what a bass was “supposed” to do—they were all guitarists who drew the short straw). They may have cited post-hardcore acts like Jawbox and Drive Like Jehu as inspiration, but even in faster, louder tracks like “Radio” and “November,” there is a sense of restraint that underlies these punkier influences.

Tracks like “Saturday” and “About Two Days” may have bursts of loud guitar noise, but overall, they get their catharsis from making room for sadness than in erupting in anger. This record is far more suited for headphones than mosh pits—an experience aided especially well by the four instrumental interludes that dot the album, making room for Emotion is Dead to do the same.

As a whole, Stereo is a brilliant example of the diversity of emo in the mid to late ’90s, utilizing many of the same sounds, moods, and influences as bands like Mineral, The Get-Up Kids, Braid, and The Promise Ring without sounding like carbon copies. At just thirty-two minutes, it’s a record that begs for repeated listens. And looking at how much time I have to make up for, I’ll be giving it plenty of attention.