If someone says ‘emo music’ to you, you might cringe. In fact, you probably do. You probably think guyliner, dyed black hair, melodramatic song titles (44. Calibre Love Letter, anyone?) and blood-spattered album covers. Whilst this might represent an accurate if harsh image of the emo scene in the early Noughties, nowadays there’s a large swathe of the punk community who would take issue with it. Emo has changed.
In recent years, there’s been a lot written about the emo ‘revival’, the way in which, ostensibly, emo in the vein that people in their thirties will remember the genre developing through the Nineties. It’s not My Chemical Romance; it could be Weezer. Emo never really went anywhere – rather, it’s returned to its roots in a twinkly, open-tuning riff-based guitar sound with confessional lyrics about high school and small town Middle America. Imagine pop-punk mixed with post-rock instrumentals and you’re not far off the modern emo sound.
For those understandably less familiar with older bands who really struck out and made emo its own genre as it branched off from hardcore about twenty-five years ago (the name of the genre itself is said to be a shortening of ‘emotional hardcore’), bands like American Football, Mineral and Texas is the Reason are a good place to begin. Old emo sounds like the uncertain younger brother of grunge, and was arguably overshadowed by it. Kids from the Midwest would write songs in their parents’ garages, isolated from the world in a way Seattle grunge wasn’t, but with dreams of escaping suburbia nonetheless. The dynamic made for an interesting, often heartbreaking vibe.
It was all put on hold. The likes of Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday and Alexisonfire gave emo a whole new aesthetic and fanbase in the early years of the last decade. Gone were thick-rimmed black glasses and lumberjack shirts; in their place, skinny jeans, dip-dyed fringes and snakebite piercings took over. These bands, despite making excellent music, marked a departure in style from what came before. They were still the voice of a generation of outsiders, but these were outsiders who wanted to be noticed, who wanted the jocks and the cool kids to see them and to reject them, rather than a generation who were overlooked, quiet and introspective.
And then, for some reason, came the revival. New bands and songwriters from Philly and the Midwest toured together. American Football reformed. Heralded by artists like Modern Baseball, high school reject vibes returned and the poetic loser desperate to escape the small town was once again celebrated.
The question of why this resurgence in popularity happened is still unanswered. Perhaps it’s the genuine truthfulness of the songs that appeals after a decade of gutsy but overstated drama. Modern Baseball’s Hours Outside in the Snow ends with a message, fictitious or honest, to a girl called Erin. It seems melodramatic, the kind of tactic employed by a band who want their fans to see how sensitive and tormented they are, but a quick Google reveals Erin is a real girl, and in fact her answerphone is included in the closing, resignatory chords of the song. Gimmick or not, the bravery to write about someone real, about something real, is admirable. Other lyrics speak of high school rejection (‘I told you I loved you/Just outside your mom’s place/You laughed then you felt bad/As we sat there red-faced’ and ‘Is he here? Are you making out?/Shut up, make out, do something already/I’m waiting’) and conjure images of running through small-town America to ask a girl to prom, inhabiting that murky stage between teenage years and adulthood.
Having seen the band live in Kingston, the loyalty of their fan base is testament to the community that emo has become. Indeed, many of these bands are just kids playing out of their suburban or rural U.S. garages, liberated to experience and release music as the kids of the 90s never were by the Internet. Most can’t sing, but it makes it all the more charming, and more importantly, honest.
If Modern Baseball captures the iconic lyrical quality of 90s emo and the high priests of the genre American Football, then Prawn and others get the riffs right. Emo is as instrumental as is it is confessional. UK bands are prominent too, namely Nai Harvest and Moose Blood, both harnessing the raw energy of young men with guitars, left with nothing to do but write about their feelings. Small labels in the U.S. such as Count Your Lucky Stars, Run For Cover Records and No Sleep Records put out splits between bands, often on vinyl and cassette tape – just one more in a vast array of indicators that emo has not yet finished its love affair with the past.
All this serves to demonstrate one thing: it’s evolution, not revolution for emo music, and it deserves a fighting chance to win you over.
