Desert Island Emo

An interlude as I continue work on the midyear albums list (the toughest part of those is that you just keep finding more and more great stuff to add). A fun little thought exercise brought about by this twitter post. As the usual "desert island" challenges go, you get only 5 albums to take with you. Which do you pick?

The Five:

The Hotelier- Home, Like Noplace is There

TWIABP- Whenever, If Ever

American Football- American Football (LP2)

Jimmy Eat World- Bleed American

Sorority Noise- Joy, Departed

Thoughts:

Man, emo bands sure do love their commas. The first two are the emo revival starter pack, both of them essential listening for understanding the scene and just making it through life generally. The recent SPIN revival ranking list (helmed by Ian Cohen, one of the few people I’d trust to do it) indicated how much the scene right now revolves around these two bands: they occupy spots 1, 2, 4, and 7 on the list. It’s fair to wonder if the scene would have become the force it is had these two bands not come around. Fortunately we’ll never need to know. The two bands sit at opposite ends of the musical spectrum: The Hotelier (at least on this album) drawing from the punk and screamo roots, and The World Is... stretching out in the Midwest style with keyboards and horns and varied arrangements, but reach the same end result: classic albums.

Choosing LP2 from American Football is probably the big unorthodox move here. It goes without saying that the original American Football is a classic to end all classics and a bedrock of the sound. Without counting up the responses, it looked like the most frequent selection on Twitter. But give me the second one, and let Mike Kinsella softly croon me into oblivion. I didn’t even give it top-two billing on last year’s year end post, but it’s grown on me every day since. If "divorce-core" is really becoming a thing, count me in.

Bleed American is I think the most fun album you can choose for this list, and is a hall of fame driving-with-the-windows-down album. “The Middle” is great now that it’s just an occasional radio play, and “A Praise Chorus” is a classic in the shoutout-other-music genre (as is, to a lesser extent, “The Authority Song”). Sure, this is the moment when emo really broke commercial, but you can't argue with the result, even if you don't like where things headed afterwards.

What to say about Joy, Departed…this album means more to me than almost any other. I never expected the song that told the story of my life to be titled "Art School Wannabe," but sometimes that's just how things go. Cam Boucher is an unbelievable lyricist, and the best I've ever heard at articulating those unspoken feelings that you don't ever know what to do with. Throw in some solid musicianship, even including a few guitar solos, and you've got an indispensable album.

On the whole, I think the list definitely shows my age (as in, young). I think it also shows that the overused trope that emo is just about being sad or crying over girls is no longer true (if it ever really was, which I suspect is not the case). There's a lot of heavy themes here, but I think the optimism on Whenever, If Ever shines through, and Bleed American certainly helps balance things out as well. 

I had to leave out a ton of really great music (continued below if you're interested) but I'm pretty satisfied with my choices. If any of these are new to you, I can't recommend them strongly enough. Enjoy!

BONUS 

Toughest Omissions:

Brand New- The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, Deja Entendu

--D&G was my last cut, and it still haunts me a little. Not much needs to be said about these two albums, they deserve all the praise they get and then some. 

Tigers Jaw- s/t

 --One of the most listenable emo albums, and solid all the way through. Quintessential autumn listening for me. Definitely in the next five up.

Rainer Maria- Look Now Look Again

--A “greater than the sum of its parts” album, which is saying something when one of those parts is the devastating “Broken Radio.”

Mineral

--Suffers the fatal flaw in these type of exercises by having their best songs spread out over two albums- you gonna grab Power of Failing and miss out on “&Serenading”? Or take Endserenading and skip “Parking Lot” and “Gloria”? Not a choice I can make.

Sunny Day Real Estate- Diary

 --It hurts to leave the canonical greatest emo song out, but unfortunately the rest of Diary just doesn’t match “In Circles”. If I ever finish my top 25 emo songs list, it will get its due.

La Dispute

--I didn’t count them as emo for our purposes here, because it’s my list and trying to fit them in would have been too painful. Wildlife would have made it of course, but cutting another album to make room simply couldn’t be done. I think it’s defensible to say they belong somewhere more in the post-hardcore world, but this is opening the door for genre pedantry so let’s leave it there. The same reasoning applies to Touché Amoré, by the way. 

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to chime in with your own five. Hopefully next up is the 2017 mid-year list, and then maybe some more desert island challenges. Stay tuned!