my varnished soapbox

emo ranking

i've been listening to a lot of midwest emo lately. or just emo. i don't really care enough about genres to be super specific. i joke about this enough to have it pointed out that there's video essays on these genres as it stands. but... i also don't care? that it's been talked about? and being talked about? i still want to talk about it?

as a disclaimer, when i say midwest emo i'm talking about the sound and not the band itself being midwest-based, since i've had fingers pointed about that. it's about the sound, dude!!!

there two schools of thought (that i made up for the purpose of this post) about contemporary emo music: the heads of each genre are american football and title fight, respectively, so you have an idea of my sonic reference points.

i listened to these bands for research purposes:

i listened to one album for each band, and one split that modern baseball and marietta did together.

i noticed "true" midwest emo tends to have a trumpet and math rock tendencies. the front bottoms fit this a bit, with their pop punk flair. it's fun, the tempo is lively, so it's easy to think it's a fun time (trumpets tend to do that) until you listen closer to the words.

melodic/post-hardcore tends to have more screaming to it. prog- or space-rock vibes can potentially saunter in (think circa survive or early thirty seconds to mars) but not tooooo much as to deviate from the lyricism being front and center. marietta really shines here. i couldn't help but hear title fight debut album at times.

modern baseball leans into one or the other without overstating but i can see why they're more midwest emo. that tends to be the consensus. still, i see the appeal. it dips its toes in both schools and has something for everybody--everybody being midwest emo prescriptivists, hardcore umbrella enjoyers, and everything in-between.

and then there's mom jeans. i've seen it said in a handful of comment boxes that mom jeans "somehow made an already-white genre whiter; i don't know how but they gentrified midwest emo." i thought it was the type of banter that blurred the lines between a fan and a hater and well... that's a middle ground fans and haters alike agree on. and... yeah. i see what they mean. the melodies and vocals insist upon letting you know that it's a midwest emo project. it's not good but it's not bad (to me) but that's the genre for you. it'll click when it's meant to.

it seems like most contemporary attempts at midwest emo tend to be pop-punk-y (my chemical romance, paramore, panic! at the disco, red jumpsuit apparatus), and melodic/post-hardcore tend to be reminiscent of screamo (alexisonfire, silverstein, the used) as well as myspace-era outfits of the late aughts and early '10s (la dispute, memphis may fire, afi, flyleaf, bring me the horizon--hell, even "relationship of command" by at the drive-in).

nevertheless, it seems like emo is coming full circle again. limewire is running, msn and yahoo messenger alerts ping one after the other, and i just got asked, "pc4pc?" if there's no .mp3 file extension, i don't want it; it's not compatible with the order i have going in my ipod nano. yes, you can borrow it for 3rd period. no, you can't have it for the weekend--wait, you got "the black parade" already? okay, maybe.

#music