emo

Record #457: Knola – The Black Beach (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

the black beach

Lemme tell you about my friend Jack.

We first met when I moved back to my hometown from Chicago. There wasn’t much of a music scene to speak of, but a few of us saw the potential for a thriving arts community. There were plenty of artists around, but there was very little support for them.

One of those groups was the short-lived Merchant Ships, a post-hardcore act helmed by Jack that somehow managed to gain a huge following on MySpace. The group had already dissolved by the time I met him.

He was still in high school.

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Record #454: Jeremy Enigk – Ghosts (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

ghosts
I first got into music back in the dial-up days. We didn’t have Spotify or Pandora; the closest thing we had to music streaming was our rich friend’s dad’s satellite radio. If we wanted to hear a specific song, we had to wait an hour or more to download it – yes, just one song. And there was nothing worse than spending hours waiting for a song to download, only for it to suck. Before adding anything to my Limewire queue, I needed assurance that it was gonna be worth it.

I spent hours a day poring over music sites, record label rosters, and liner notes, hoping to find bands that would be worth the download time.

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Record #425: Brand New – Science Fiction (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
Last week, my friend Dan texted me. “Jesse Lacey, man.”
I didn’t need to try very hard to figure out what had happened. The fallout from the #metoo movement has gone Scorched Earth on the entertainment world. It was easy to put two and two together.
The next day, I got an email: my vinyl preorder of Brand New’s newest album had finally shipped. I had been eagerly awaiting it, but now, it sort of tied my stomach in knots.
But at the same time, I still really wanted to listen to it. I enjoyed it enough to buy it, after all.

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Record #417: Cool Hand Luke – Cora (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
About a week before I started 10th grade, I was at a Taking Back Sunday show (at a small coffeeshop in my hometown—this was before they got huge), and I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said, “Cool Hand Luke.” Always eager to find new music, I hopped on Interpunk.com (they’re still open, B.T. Dubs) and did a quick search.
And friends, I’m not sure if any other internet search has ever had such an effect on my life.

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Record #394: The Juliana Theory – Music From Another Room(2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
For all the love Understand This is a Dream (rightly) receives, I think this EP may have been even more important to me.

And it’s not just that opener “This is the End of Your Life” served as my intermediate vocal lessons, or the deep sense of comfort that Moments/In a Fraction still give me. It’s not the memory I have I driving my little sister around as she clutched her giant stuffed lion and me quipping, “we know your lion” during the chorus of “Liability.” And it’s not just the time my best friend recruited me to sing and play guitar for his recording of Piano Song (his Recording Arts class final project).

It’s not just sentimentality.

This album is one hundred percent killer. The perfect midpoint between Understand’s lushly orchestrated emo and Love’s more straightforward rock n roll. The songs are ambitious without being unapproachable. And it’s the strength of these songs that helps the six-song* Music From Another Room stand eye to eye with even their best full lengths.

​*vinyl has a bonus track