Seam rule. Classic Touch & Go circa 93. Strains of Slint and Bitch Magnet (obviously since Sooyoung Park fronted that band as well) but with a more melodic approach reminiscent of the indie-tinged emo that would soon become all the rage. Very beautiful guitar playing with a nice amount of crunchy parts and big choruses to break up the beautiful monotony. More bands should waste their time trying to rip off bands like this that people have forgotten about instead of trying to rip off the Black Lips, because hey, THAT BAND IS STILL PUTTING OUT RECORDS!!!
Ffffftttt- and a low whistle... Another flare shot into the gaping webby void...
Well heya folks. Thanks to the invitation (and grooming) of Sensei Cam, I'm here to toss my borrowed cents at the feet of all you bloggist taste-makers / recommendation-takers. Nice to meet you.
Let's kick it off with something current: Edmonton's MAHRIA. I seriously can't get enough of this record. A punishing, tortured, female-fronted work sitting at that perfect intersection of emo and post-hardcore. Soul-crushing primal yelps, wickedly melodic guitar interplay, and some of the hugest production I've heard in a long time. The track "Justification of an Old Man" is particularly devastating. Available for free on Bandcamp.
Oh yeah, and I just found out that THEY PLAYED IN VANCOUVER YESTERDAY AND I HAD NO IDEA. FML. If you went to that show, post here and tell me how awesome it was so I can feel shittier about myself.
This is what it is. Emo-ey pop-punk with awesome guitar playing and super hoarse vocals that manage to sound more sincere than your standard 'I'm-trying-to-compensate-for-the-melody-by-singing-like-I'm-in-a-crust-band' performance that is so common with pop-punks who try to hide from the fact that the genre has more in common with "shitty" music than music that is undeniably punk. This band is really popular so I'm sure this'll get taken down but enjoy it while it lasts. The song "27" is especially perfect.
I've been lazy and since I don't upload any of these albums myself, most of them seem to have been taken down from mediafire. I was just going to discreetly re-up all of them... but the number kept getting bigger and I don't want to sit at my computer all day. So I'm just going to leave this here and let people comment if they want something re-upped that has been taken down.
p.s. google it first! someone else probably uploaded it!
So You Think You Can Sleep are a fantastic band from here in Vancouver that I have absolutely loved ever since I first saw them a few years ago. Very catchy math-rock-emo styled guitar playing, some trumpet, dual male-female vocals and Aaron from Bad Fate (Vancouver's secretly-best drummer!) laying it down masterfully on the kit. Musically, this is the intersection between Cap'n Jazz and American Football... just with really political lyrics. You can listen and then download...
This is a really good, poppy emo record. Short songs, no weirdness, good guitar playing. I've loved this record for many years and I just realized that it doesn't get talked about among my circle of 90's-indie-loving-friends so I thought I'd share it.
P.S. sorry for the lack of posts. Live has been one big septic tank of especially smelly and time-eating shit lately...
A beautiful Saturday. Coffee in my cup, played an awesome basement show last night, had good talks with old friends and slept in until the early afternoon. The sun is shining through my window, NCAA basketball is on in the background... And I feel optimistic about the future for this brief moment. What this has to do with Cap'n Jazz? Your guess is as good as mine. I sat down at my computer just now and felt like posting something...
This seemed to be the only album that satisfied the feelings running through me at the moment. What is it? Poppy, sloppy, innocent Midwestern emo from 1994. Based on that description you either can't wait to hear this or you've already left... If the weather is nice wherever you may be, put this on your portable-listening device and go for a long walk. It'll make you think about romance, growing up, nostalgia and all those other wonderful, post-adolescent experiences that only seem to have meaning for that brief, amazing period of our lives.
Eric Axen is a good dude, and all the bands I'm aware of him playing with are great. From Hermetic, who just released their debut LP (peep their bandcamp) to Sightlines, Paper Lanterns (he only played guitar for them on their last show. Whatever...) and finally: Painted Youth, who easily land in my top 3 BC bands ever. Loud interesting punk with great lyrics. I wish I got to see them when I was younger, I wish I got to see them at all. (Keep your ear to the ground about the possible Alf House anniversary reunion...)
Photo by Erin Green
Because I don't want to throw Hermetic's brand new album online for free, here is the Painted Youth discography as complete as I have it. Apparently there are a few splits floating around. A 5 song demo and their full album, which never got released, unfortunately.
A long search is finally completed because a Russian filesharing website finally translated the "download" button.
All three 7"s are here PLUS a fantastic split with a country-emo band called the Warsaw Union, who were from Duncan, Vancouver Island. It just might be the only listenable folk-punk recording ever.
A hugely underrated Victoria emo band, one of the last in the first wave that spanned the mid-90's.
High res album art of this is elusive, so here's a photo of the record because it's badass.
Two crushing songs from Ampere on the A side, total 90 seconds. Ampere is a really fast and violent band that has Will Killingsworth from Orchid in it, these songs are two of their best. I've always found it odd that I prefer only hearing about a minute of music from a band that fast, you'd think you'd be hungry for more but no.
The other side of this is one of my favourite songs, though it's pretty teenage in hindsight. It's called I Was The Sword by Funeral Diner, a band that broke up in summer 08 as I recall. Sounds like it's a song about Seth Babb's ex girlfriend, but it's spiced up with that tragic hero mythological bullshit that you find in emo music. I mean I like it, but maybe you know what I'm talking about. Seth Babb is the singer of Funeral Diner.
Ghostlimb is a pretty popular (I think) band from LA. They're made of the living singer of Graf Orlock and 2 other guys. Super good emo/hardcore type stuff, their half of this split is good. The reason I'm posting this, however, is Fischer. They don't seem to have much material, in fact the dark side of this record is the most they have in one place.
Basically Fischer is a 2 piece emo band. They have really good guitar playing with some melodies, but the singing is the angsty shouting I like. Think Tiny Hawks but less noodly guitars and less screaming, or 1994! kinda. One of those two piece bands that you don't realize is only two guys and then when you do you go WHOAAAA.
City of Caterpillar was a band from Richmond Virginia that had some guys from pg. 99, and some of them went on to form Ghastly City Sleep and Pygmy Lush. I'm not going to pretend to know what was going on in a scene from 10 years ago and 3000 miles away, I'll just talk about the music.
It's maybe my favourite album. I think I've listened to this one hundreds of times, or maybe just one hundred of times if that's a more realistic figure. If you've ever heard an "emo" album that sounded like Explosions in the Sky but with a teenager screaming in the background and ruining it, well you know what to expect I guess. This is the finest example of that sound I've ever heard. It's honest, dynamic, got good musicianship, takes you on a journey, is badass, etc. Everything good I could possibly describe about a hardcore album with 8 minute songs is in here. What they mostly sound like is the Japanese band Envy, except without that quality that Japanese bands have. You know, where they've perfected a sound but it's kind of devoid of emotion, like maybe they sound like that because that's how it should sound? These guys sound like this because it's what's inside 'em.
My favourite song is the second one. It's also the shortest so maybe if you decide you hate this you won't waste much time, but I hope you all like it. I dunno how to buy this album anymore else I'd share a link to that.
If you ever are curious about midwestern emo and maybe you don't know anything, let this album be the one you hear. It pretty much sums up all the high points, and is my favourite. Jimmy Eat World's Clarity might be the other primary example of this sound, but this album's better. In terms of recommendations, there's probably a lot more and I'm sure you'll hear them from me. For now, grab a beer or put on some coffee and peep this one.
e: This music needs more talking about, so here we go. The case with a lot of music like this is either there's too much raw emotion going on and it just sounds amateurish, or the band has become scientifically exact at creating the one sound but the emotion is lost. This is a really happy medium, it sounds like pretty darn good songwriting for say, post rock, but the people making it are about to cry. They're playing really hard and it shows. The Appleseed Cast made some bad albums but then re-emerged as a pretty decent post rock band. They were able to channel their raw emotion into a more polished form, and as a good post rock album should their music now conjures moods and leaves more to the listener's imagination. So this sounds like punk-post rock. It's nothing like post-punk though I guess it literally is that.
I was thinking about what I thought was a good album that maybe some people hadn't heard before and thought of this one Raein album. Their last one, called Natri di Altri Padri. It's a really good example of what a lot of European emo sounds like. But then I decided I shouldn't really put up the best example, I should put my favourite example.
So here's this band La Quiete. It sounds like maybe 4 or 5 guys who are thin and at most 5'10 but with beards, yelling about I don't know what because it's in a foreign language. These dudes sound like a hardcore band or maybe even metalcore band, that have been shrunken and become diminished in every way. Instead of being extremely dark, they're probably just singing about girls. Instead of being crushingly heavy, they sound like spastic punk. Instead of being fat, muscular or heavily tattooed they're a bunch of little dudes with good attitudes and maybe a couple tattoos.
That whole thing didn't make a lot of sense but really the whole thing's like 18 minutes long. I'm just gonna say my favourite song is the last one, Super Omega, because as well as being rad it'll make you listen to all the ones before it too.
I haven't been able to figure out if this is still being distributed, but I've bought these guys music on ebay before at least.
I can't quite put my finger on why I became so interested in Victoria's emo scene in the early-to-mid-90's. I know I learned about one of the major bands, Render Useless, when my boss gave me their discography CD at a show a year ago and I guess I just started compiling music from there.
Unfortunately for Victoria the only pre-2000 punk band from there that really made waves was Dayglo Abortions. Not because of their music, they just put out an a-politically offensive record cover that happened to be seen by the wrong censorship crusader.
Of course some people remember Neos as the fastest hardcore bands of the 80's. They probably weren't, but I digress.
No, Victoria didn't find it's niche in the beer-swilling mess that was non-edge hardcore, but a little later in the 90's.
Following the release of Shiner's debut tape "Slightly Polished" in 1993, Dave Brown's Slow to Burn records funded every band worth listening to in Victoria. With the arrival of one Chris Iler, a former Torontonian (Who ran a college radio show in 1984 with a future member of Crisis of Faith, who went on to make a killer split 7" with Chokehold!) and his label Fans of Bad Productions, these artists received larger - though still painfully limited - distribution through two compilation albums (Fuck the Commonwealth, and Go!)
I think that's enough background... Now the songs!
1. Shiner-Burnt the first Slow to Burn release. The vocals are derivative of the larger trend in rock n' roll at the time, but an important band, nonetheless.
2. M Blanket-Kid Collision
the first band of Dave Wenger, the most noteworthy participant in the scene at this time. Though most of M Blanket's discography sounds like a really awkward mix of Jawbreaker and Rancid, I think this song is the best hint at Dave's potential.
3. Ache Hour Credo-Smegma My favorite Dave Wenger project. After M Blanket's dissolution he formed AHC. Because of tension in the group only two songs were officially released on the Fans of Bad Productions compilations. However they were able to record a demo, and it is fantastic. After AHC broke up he started Daddy's Hands, a great post-punk/indie band.
4. Breakwater-Eleven
Basically Republic of Freedom Fighters, but with Dave Wenger instead of Casey Mercer (Yes, Frog Eyes Casey Mercer). Like most of the early bands they only recorded a demo and a few songs for the FOBP comps. However they also released a FANTASTIC split with Closure, from California. This song was their side.
5. Republic of Freedom Fighters-Year of the Rat
What a band! Despite only lasting only a year, they were the only early band who recorded enough material for an LP. Plus a whack of splits.
6. Benchwarmer-Weirdo
Sup-Poppy indie, their 7" "Pud" was a pretty popular release on Slow to Burn. I've included them here because they were the predecessor to...
7. Render Useless-Generation Gap
The group that started it all. This still-influential group has the biggest catalog of them all I think. (Their discography CD has 25 (!!!) songs) This song is off of their split with Miracle of 86.
8. Gus-Dom Fights Chris
Born Against worship featuring Steve McBean, who sings in Black Mountain! Their other releases were a little more weird. I have one of their tapes, I'll post it as soon as I can rip it. It has a Crucifucks cover on it!
9. Wrought: Ironsmile-Valentines Day
The latest release I could find, though I don't know much about the band itself. They put out one 7" and a split, not on Slow to Burn, though! Possibly a sign that the scene was starting to grow?
The Victoria music scene is by no means dead. It's still small, all inclusive, and churning out great bands every few months. Just listen to bands like Gutless, Watcher, Six Brew Bantha and No Eulogy just to name a few. You can pick up Render Useless' discography CD, Watcher's 7" and a whole whack of other great bands (Damages, Mouse Ear, Deadsure, ect ect...) at Clue 2 records.
This is one of those albums you want to listen to when you literally can't find comfort in anything. Not to say this is a happy album, it's very much the opposite, it's just the sonic equivalent of that feeling. David Bazan (aka Pedro the Lion) is a christian and a lot of his songs, on this album especially, are lent their fair-share of emotional weight because they're about the things that tempt him to sin, the things that have made him sin and feeling like shit. Something we can all relate to. Obviously this is uncool because Bazan is an outspoken christian and the music is definitely not edgy, falling somewhere between Low and Death Cab for Cutie's first few albums... but if sad, guitary and existential singer-songwriters are your thing then hey, I'm not stopping you.
A melodic, 90's emo band named after a Misfits lyric... based on that sentence alone I guess you'll know if you're interested in this or not. These guys sound like Sunny Day Real Estate and are from the same era. They were kind of a next-big-thing band but as they were poised to start working on their first major-label album, they realized they just didn't want to be a band anymore. Too bad but hey, if the 90's had a surplus of anything, it was great emo bands. They also have a self-titled EP that's worth checking out
