emo

Record #987: 84 Tigers – Time in the Lighthouse (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not reviewing records for other sites quite as much these days, but when I did, it was often a huge exercise in self control to not buy ever record I listened to. It’s still a mystery to me how I would decide to buy some records but not others, but it was not a foolproof system, and sometimes I erred.

One of the more grievous errors was to not buy Time in the Lighthouse, the debut of Michigan post-hardcore 84 Tigers, an act whose members’ resumes include Small Brown Bike and Swellers. In fact, I bought this record only after re-reading my own glowing review.

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Record #985: Benton Falls – Guilt Beats Hate (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Very few releases had as profound an impact on my teenaged music tastes than Deep Elm Records’ Emo Is Awesome, Emo is Evil, Vol 1. And few tracks on that compilation had the impact of Benton Falls “Angel on Hiatus,” a shapeshifting track that traverses the full spectrum of emo’s moods and dynamics with a powerful climax.

But like many of the bands discovered through that comp (see also: The Appleseed Cast), I didn’t dive too deeply into the records that provided those tracks. While many of the songs from Guilt Beats Hate ended up on various emo mix CD-Rs, it’s taken me until just now to buy a proper copy. The record has lost none of its potency though.

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Record #952: Fiddlehead – Death is Nothing to Us (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, it’s become pretty apparent that Fiddlehead has overcome every curse that befalls supergroups. While many similar groups are crushed by the weight of their own hype before their first record, Fiddlehead continues to get better.

Death Is Nothing To Us continues the band’s penchant for observing grief through a lens of fist-pumping, emotional post-hardcore, but this time around, they magnify the nuance of both their sound and mourning to subatomic detail.

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Record #942: Lewis – Even So (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

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.

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Record #941: Braid – Frame and Canvas (1997)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I swear, sometimes it feels like I never had an emo phase at all. Despite how fully consumed I was by that scene from ages 15 to 18, I stumble upon foundational records that I’ve totally ignored with a startling regularity.

Add another tally for my ignorance, because even though I had listened to Braid’s seminal Frame and Canvas before this decade, I was still well into my twenties when I did hear it, and it took me until this past week to realize I needed it.

And yeah. I’m kicking myself.

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Record #938: Anchors – Adult Decisions (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Go to local shows.

I cannot emphasize this point enough. Beneath the glimmer of mainstream music is a thriving ecosystem of artists who are just as good (or better!) than anything you might find on on the radio. And while some folks might scoff and say, “but I don’t know any of those bands!”, the discovery is the point.

A few weeks ago, my band played a show in a city we’d never been, and we were delighted by both the reception we received and the quality of the bands we played with. For the point of this post, I’ll draw special attention to Anchors, playing that night as a solo act on electric guitar. I got a copy of the album and found that while the stripped-down arrangements helped to highlight David Black’s clever songwriting, the full band versions on record don’t obscure it any.

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Record #927: The Get Up Kids – Eudora (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve previously said that I wasn’t a huge Get Up Kids fan as a teenager. There was a single reason for that: nothing could top my entry to the band, which was this, the Eudora compilation, which I bought specifically the track “Central Standard Time,” which is a top ten emo song, and spun on repeat for months at a time. As great as their studio albums were, nothing else grabbed my attention like this compilation.

As for why I hadn’t purchased this record until this week though, I can’t tell you that.

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Record #926: The Anniversary – Designing A Nervous Breakdown (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

They say hindsight is 20/20, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The lens of nostalgia often glazes over details with a broad brush, homogenizing the intricate diversity of moments in time into a monotone.

Take, for instance, the second wave of emo. While revisionist history might paint a scene of twinkly guitars and angular drumming (thanks, American Football), the view from the ground was far different. Emo was not nearly as much a matter of a sound as it was an ethos.

One of the best examples of emo’s diversity is The Anniversary. While emo was undoubtedly rooted in punk and hardcore, their debut record Designing A Nervous Breakdown borrows much of its palette from decidedly non-punk sources, offering up a heaping helping of hooks, harmonies, and synthesizers. While it doesn’t sound like what anyone might think of when they imagine emo, it remains one of the most well-loved emo records of the era.

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Record #925: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer of 2005, my high school band played a show in a dude’s parents’ garage (that dude is now a member of the excellent band JAGALCHI). In between bands, a song was playing that gave the same sort of frantic post-hardcore as At the Drive-In. I was transfixed and asked what it was. The answer was a band called …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. A couple years later, I stumbled upon their album Source Tages & Codes in the used CD section of my local record store. I bought it without hesitation.

But as I listened to it, I found it a bit too scattered to get my head around it. There were moments of the chaotic bliss that grabbed my attention, but they were brief and rare among a bevy of anthemic emo songs, theatrical prog, and, to my dismay (then) power pop songs.

With the space of two decades between my first impression and finding it for free on The Sound of Vinyl’s Father’s Day sale, I’ve realized that what I initially saw as scatterbrained is actually sprawling, offering a snapshot of the early 2000s alt scene that includes bits of every subgenre’s tendencies.

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Record #919: Khamsin – What’s Left of Life? (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In 2018, I was part of the team organizing Bloodline Fest here in South Bend. While we were talking to idle threat about playing, they asked if there was a space for their friends Khamsin, who they were touring with. And boy am I glad there was. They looked to be fresh out of high school, but as soon as they started playing, it brought me back to my own teenage years, playing a brand of introspective post-hardcore reminiscent of As Cities Burn, Brand New, mewithoutYou, and Beggars-era Thrice.

As strong as that initial performance was though, it barely scratched the surface of what they would achieve on their debut full-length, What’s Left of Life? Those same influences are present, but not derivative as much as an accent in their own voice. And they use that voice to tell a story of grief and loss that’s as raw as it is tender.

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