post hardcore

Record #839: Least – Folding My Hands, Accepting Defeat (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Somewhere around 2005, I decided that emo was dead.

I had spent my formative years in devout reverence to bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Thursday, Appleseed Cast, and Further Seems Forever.  But when the wave shifted to bands like Fall Out Boy, Anberlin, and My Chemical Romance (who, even they will tell you, were not emo), I let my attention stray from the scene and moved on to things like indie, folk, and post rock.

The last decade or so has ushered in an honest-to-goodness emo renaissance so profound it’s not even fair to call it a revival anymore, with bands all over the world resurrecting the best parts of the halcyon emo scene of yore with stunning results.

And while Florida emo outfit least may bear some superficial resemblance to the guy-linered mallcore that put such a bad taste in my mouth in the first place (some have jokingly referred to them as “Transberlin”), if any of that stuff sounded like this, I never would have retired my girl jeans in the mid-oughts.

Continue reading →

Record #830: Hot Water Music – Caution (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, anyone who knows me should already know that there are some inexplicable and inexcusable gaps in my music knowledge. There are plenty of bands that I should have grown up loving but ignored for one reason or another.

In the case of Hot Water Music, my suspicion is that I had confused them for Poison the Well, who I never cared for. And yes, I know how stupid that was.

I’ve set to mending these gaps over the last few years, but few of those undertakings have been as satisfying as Hot Water Music’s Caution, a fiery burst of melodic post hardcore that checks just about every box of what I was looking for as a high schooler.

Continue reading →

Record #810: Drive Like Jehu – Drive Like Jehu (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

1991 has been called “The Year that Punk Broke.” The success of Nirvana’s Nevermind led record companies to make a mad dash to sign all the noisy, abrasive, energetic bands they could find, leading to some absolutely bizarre major label deals for bands like Melvins, Smashing Pumpkins, and Jawbox. DIY stalwarts Fugazi purportedly turned down multiple million-dollar deals.

One of the noisier bands to land one of those deals was Drive Like Jehu, whose sprawling math-rock/post-hardcore masterpiece Yank Crime was somehow released on Interscope.

But Interscope wouldn’t have been interested had it not been for the success of their self-titled debut, which lacks none of the fury or ambition of its follow-up.

Continue reading →

Record #805: Cursive – Burst and Bloom (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In my perception, Cursive has had two distinctive characteristics. The first is Tim Kasher’s conceptual and self-referential lyrics, which really came to their own on Cursive’s Domestica. The second is the presence of a cellist, which marked The Ugly Organ and their two reunion albums.

In that perspective, this is the first release in their chronology that really sounds like Cursive to me before my recent deep dive into their discography.

Continue reading →

Record #804: Cursive – Domestica (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

On paper, it shouldn’t have worked. An emo concept album about a failing relationship loosely based on the singer’s own divorce doesn’t exactly sound like a formula for a hit record.

Lucky for all of us though, Cursive’s Domestica manages to avoid all of the self-indulgence and clunky storytelling that too many concept albums fail to avoid. Instead, it shows a huge leap forward in both Tim Kasher’s songwriting and the band’s musicianship, leading to an undisputed emo masterpiece.

Continue reading →

Record #803: Cursive – The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After their Crank! Records debut Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes, Omaha natives Cursive joined up with the then-burgeoning Omaha record label Saddle Creek. In a few years time, Saddle Creek would become a staple of the underground emo-ish scene, enlisting such bands as Rilo Kiley, The Faint, and Bright Eyes to their roster.

Now, when people talk about Saddle Creek, Cursive is always one of the first bands mentioned. But on their second album, released just five years after the founding of the label, Cursive was still building their legend alongside their new label. And while it might not be remembered as one of their best works, The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song is an important chapter in their mythology.

Continue reading →

Record #802: Cursive – Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes (1997)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I’ve been a fan of Omaha’s Cursive for quite a while. I picked up a CD single of “Art is Hard” from my local music store in 12th grade, and I spun those two songs on repeat for weeks. I downloaded several songs from Domestica on LimeWire and burned them to my one of my many emo mixes. Through my “serious music fan” phase in college, The Ugly Organ was one of the few emo records that I still listened to regularly.

But as much as I love those records, I’ve never dug too deep into their earlier material. That is, until I bought a box of classic records from my friend Stephen that included most of the Cursive back catalog.

Continue reading →

Record #808: At the Drive-In – Vaya (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Conversations about At the Drive-In’s best release usually dance around a gridlock between In/Casino/Out and Relationship of Command. 

However, that conversation simply cannot be complete without taking their incredible EP Vaya into consideration. While it contains absolutely no shortage of ATDI’s signature angular fury, it also sees the group adding experimental elements into their sonic palate. While it’s often described as a bridge between the two legendary full lengths, it even points to Omar and Cedric’s future in the Mars Volta with astonishing prescience.

Continue reading →

Record #807: At the Drive-In – In/Casino/Out (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Many years ago, I said that Relationship of Command was undisputedly the best record At the Drive-In had ever released. And while it remains my favorite, I can’t deny the fact that my 2013 claim wasn’t influenced by the astronomical price that vinyl copies of In/Casino/Out were commanding.

As fortune would have it though, I recently acquired a large lot of records from a friend that included an unreal number of classics for a more-than-agreeable price (thanks, Stephen), which included this record that, historical revisionism aside, means a great deal to me (and a whole lot more that will be reviewed in the coming days and weeks).

While the band had been active for four years before this with two EPs and a full length to their name, In/Casino/Out is really the album where they became the At the Drive-In that would become post hardcore legends.

Continue reading →

Record #794: The Armed – Ultrapop (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Genre alchemy gets into diminishing returns pretty quickly. While fusion was once incredibly revolutionary, the internet has hastened the pace of these reactions so that there’s almost no crossover that hasn’t been tried.

We’re almost two decades past the advent of Girl Talk, whose genre-defying mashups saw acts like Fleetwood Mac, Ludacris, The Ramones, Lil Missy, Radiohead, Jay-Z, and Metallica featured on the same track. Babymetal debuted eleven years ago. Ill-conceived chimeras like crunkcore and emo rap are now old enough to vote. Then you have the entire crop of bands blending metal with shoegaze, post-rock, spirituals, and even Azerbaijani folk music.

Genre-bending alone isn’t enough to make compelling music.

So it’s a good thing that Ultrapop has much more to its credit, because this is one of the freshest takes on genre fusion in a long time.

Continue reading →