I Want To Rewrite History
If you ever want to feel an acute sense of impostor syndrome,
sit on a panel about the future of radio with actual public/community radio vets when you’ve only been in the game a few years. In 2009, I was asked speak at MACRoCk; I was very much out of my league, but I got paid in a weekend festival pass (and, before we started dating, got to hang out with my future-wife between sets… so, MACRoCk holds a special place in my heart).
I headbanged to Black Tusk in a YMCA, partied hard to a house-show cover band and danced to the Super Vacations. When a festival line-up is somewhat unfamiliar to me, I like to go in blind, so when I stumbled into the Artful Dodger one afternoon and heard a band copping every Cap’n Jazz move — spindly finger-tapping, abrupt rhythmic/tempo changes, yelps somewhere between a bad croon and a scream — I did a double-take. “Wait, they still make my kinda emo?”
Algernon Cadwallader wasn’t the first to revisit a certain style of ‘90s emo, but the band — and 2008’s Some Kind of Cadwallader — signified a shift to many: a refutation of emo’s mainstream codification as a Hot Topic look, as goth (this old still doesn’t get that one), as big-budget pop music, as you’re so emo. Of course, all of that existed in the scene before — where do y’all think we got our studded belts? Clarity came out on Capitol Records, for chrissakes.
I digress. Both Ian Cohen and David Anthony were compelled to contribute the Newsletter Discourse this week by going long on what was the called the “emo revival,” a catch-all term loathed by the bands who played it (mostly) and loved the press who “turned [it] into a thing to compensate for showing up like five years too late.”
There’s some truth in that, I suppose. I went down rabbit holes (read: mp3 blogs), fascinated by then-early-20-somethings playing the music of my teenage years in the late ‘90s: Snowing, 1994, football etc., Monument, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate). I even wrote about some of these bands for NPR Music, before the whole thing blew wide open. But the reason I held back from going all-in was, while it felt warm and fuzzy to revisit those sounds, I wanted something to grow from emo’s ashes.
When I was on the Washed Up Emo podcast in 2015, I talked about this idea a bit: wanting to be supportive of the scene, but watching from the sidelines until there was a shift beyond nostalgia. There’s still so much explore in emo’s tradition — metal, for example, honors its roots with a gritty reverence — but there’s also so much room to expand. As a fan who came of age in the pivotal ‘90s era, I take pleasure in the bands that mine old sounds with fresh songwriting, but I’m more excited for emo’s future; punk’s tentacles have a way of finding undiscovered crevices, none more suited to experimentation than emo.
Eventually heard that promise in bands like Foxing, oso oso, Joyce Manor and Tigers Jaw. Most recently, I’ve been taken by Bartees Strange, which challenges emo’s sonic palette in ways I find quite thrilling.
That evolution took time. It’s cool to be on the come-up, to document a scene as it happens. The discussion this past week has revolved around Big Platform recognition, but, to be honest, zines and college radio have been left out of the conversation as the primary historians and excavators of taste, with reviews scribbled on post-it notes and mixes shared with whomever’s willing to listen. College radio DJs, especially, ditch studies to dig into stacks, cram into DIY spaces and nearly flunk freshman year in doing so — not that I would know… guess that worked out in the end. — Lars Gotrich
Note: the Bandcamp 6-Pack and RIYL sections will return next week.
The Playlist
27 tracks. Lotta hardcore. Buried Alive, the hard-as-f*** Buffalo hardcore band, is back. Gulch’s “Self-Inflicted Mental Terror” has the nastiest, most unnecessarily elongated UGH! I’ve heard in years. Rebelmatic, the NYHC crew that wants to bring back Wearing Your Own Band T-Shirt, knows a super catchy hook is the power behind killer gang vocals. I’ve got a thing about Smashing Pumpkins covers — mostly, they are not good — but Fruit Bats’ hazy “Today” has me all sorts of intrigued by its full-album cover of Siamese Dream. Kali Malone dronin’ some organ on a surprisingly elegiac Drew McDowall (Coil) track. Ogdens’ really hits the sweet spot between Comets on Fire psych-blast and AmRep gutter-punk. LoneMoon’s bit-crushed hip-hop noise (more on that later). Emo of the ‘90s Midwest (Barely Civil), bummer bop (Worst Party Ever) and grunge (Late Bloomer) varietals. Throwbacks to K-pop queen BoA, electro-horror fanatics S.S. Bountyhunter (probably more on this later, too) and Swedish power-metal heroes Lost Horizon.
Stream the playlist via Spotify. Did you miss a previous playlist? Get thee to the archives.