The Scene is Now Emo-Core

By Jordan Kurland

   If there is one thing more difficult than defining emo-core, it is finding a band willing to admit its involvement. Although emo-core's roots can be traced to the mid-'80s hardcore days of Dischord Records, the style has been the subject of increasing attention in the last four years. And now, with the news that emo paragon Sunny Day Real Estate has reformed, the style is sure to receive even wider recognition. But even Sunny Day Real Estate, the band that lifted the style to new heights in terms of both creativity and popularity, winces at the mention of the word. Speaking through its manager, the notoriously press-shy band commented: "Sunny Day Real Estate won't deny that they're in the emo genre but they feel Rites of Spring should be credited with pioneering that."

   Literally, emo-core is a term for emotionally expressive punk rock music. While the songs are more melodic than traditional punk, they exude the same sensibility and attitude. Emo, in its purest form, is both anthemic and guttural. When the movement began, emo was what older, disillusioned hardcore kids listened to after they had grown out of the notion that they could conquer the world.

   Rites of Spring, which featured guitarist/vocalist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty, both now of Fugazi, is widely regarded as the first emo-core band. It was a melodic hardcore group, but what set it apart was the subject matter of its songs. Rather than ranting about revolutions and anger, Picciotto sang about lost love and forgotten memories. Take, for instance, "Theme (If I Started Crying)," from Rites of Spring's only full-length: "Sometimes when I see a world inside/Sometimes when I try, I really try/And hope's just another rope to hang myself with/To tie me down till something real comes around."

   Other bands contemporary to Rites of Spring, such as 7 Seconds and Embrace, as well as numerous groups that followed in their wake, such as Still Life and Sense Field, helped to cultivate the sound, but it was with Sunny Day Real Estate's debut release in 1994, Diary (Sub Pop), that emo began making waves outside the hardcore community. The band's captivating sound fused lead singer Jeremy Enigk's charismatic, angst-ridden delivery and soul-stirring lyrics with the powerful guitar playing of Daniel Hoerner and the driving rhythms of bassist Nate Mendel (now of the Foo Fighters) and drummer William Goldsmith. Sunny Day quickly became one of the most important college rock bands of the '90s, but, proving the cliché that the candles that burns twice as bright burns out twice as fast, the group disbanded in March of 1995.

   764-HERO vocalist/guitarist John Atkins, who went to high school with Goldsmith, had a good vantage point from which to judge the impact of Sunny Day Real Estate's music on the music scene. "I remember going on our first tour and we started noticing that the local opener sounded like Sunny Day almost every single night. You can definitely see that Sunny Day had that Velvet Underground appeal where it's like no one heard them, but everyone who did started a band. People heard Sunny Day and were like, 'Wow, you can do that!'"

   According to Jeremy Gomez, the bass player for Mineral, Sunny Day's brief career did not limit the impact of their music. "Sunny Day came out of nowhere and changed a lot of people's lives," he says. Gomez claims, however that it was not Sunny Day Real Estate that led his band, which has always been dogged by the emo label, towards the genre. "We kind of fell on he scene by accident," he recalls via telephone from his home in Austin, Texas. "We got together and started writing songs and then we played a show in Houston with Christie Front Drive. We had never heard of them and they had never heard of us, but it turned out to be a good bill. We were blown away. It was the first time that we realized there were other bands playing a similar music style."

   Soon after, Mineral recorded its first 7" for Christie Front Drive's Audio Concept label and, in the process, dug itself deeper into the scene. By the time the group released The Power of Failing on Crank! in 1996, it was already one of the most celebrated post-Sunny Day emo-core outfits. Following the album's release, Mineral inked a deal with Interscope Records, but a desire to branch out led to last year's premature break up. "I just personally felt that I had accomplished everything that I wanted to in Mineral," explains Gomez. "I thought the direction that we would have gone from there would have either been stagnant or we would have gone into a direction I wasn't really into." Despite his resistance to accepting the emo-core tag, Gomez acknowledges that he benfited from being part of the movement. "There are a lot of people that like to bash the whole scene, we wouldn't have been as popular as we were."

   Mineral touring mate the Promise Ring may be the first group to step away from the scene without losing credibility. Since all four members of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, band had been hardcore kids, and singer Davey Von Bohlen had played in the emo band Cap'n Jazz (which recently released a posthumous collection of all of its recorded material, Analphabetapolothology, on Jade Tree), the Promise Ring was quickly branded as emo. The release of the group's first LP on Jade Tree in 1996, 30 Degrees Everywhere, confirmed it. Although these days the band avoids the phrase like the plague, being dubbed emo-core wasn't so disheartening in the beginning. "It's weird. Four years ago it had a completely different meaning," says bassist Jason Gnewikow from his home in Chicago, where he is recupertaing from the band's recent van accident. "It's kind of turned into this thing that people shy away from and I can understand why. I think it has gotten so wrong. Punk and hardcore people are very protective of their own and it has kind of been taken away by the outside world like the music industry."

   The Promise Ring's latest offering, Nothing Feels Good (Jade Tree), is a drastic departure from its previous efforts. A well-crafted power-pop album, it is not so much a reaction against emo as it is a reflection of a shift in the band's musical interests. "When we first started the band it was kind of like the boom of Sunny Day Real Estate," Gnewikow hastens to point out. "I think mostly what influences us to write songs has a lot to do with what we are listening to, and at that time that was the stuff we were listening to. As an early starting band you are kind of struggling to find how you fit into your own calling, your own sound. After a while you start paying more attention to your songwriting."

   Naturally there are a number of acts around today that did not grow up in and around the emo scene but have learned from and drawn heavily on it. Far, a hard rock quartet from Sacramento, California, credits the style as a sort of guiding light. "For me, it was less an influenece than a validation thing, says lead singer Jonah Matranga. "We were sort of moving along in this odd direction, and to hear bands like Quicksand and Sunny Day was like meeting somoene else who likes the same weird band you do." Unlike many of his scene-mates, Matranga has no problem owning up to his band's emo-ness. "I love the term, actually," Matranga confesses. "I'm always down for emotion and people that are not afraid to show it."

   Even if Sunny Day's next album - due out this fall on Sub Pop - does not have the expected impact, it is doubtful that the emo genre will disintegrate anytime soon. There are plenty of bands stoking the fire, including Karate, Jejune, Rainer Maria, Pave the Rocket, Branston, Appleseed Cast, Camber and Cursive. There are also just as many acts out there building on or borrowing from it, such as 764-HERO, Trackstar, the Get-Up Kids, Unwound, Knapsack, Jimmy Eat World, Triple Fast Action and, in less obvious ways, Modest Mouse.

   According to John Szuch, the founder of Deep Elm Records, the music remains powerful, even as it broadens its parameters. His label documented the movement last year with a compilation titled What's Mine Is Yours: The Emo Diaries, Chapter One. (Due to the positive response, Szuch is gearing up for a second "more somber" collection, A Million Miles Away: The Emo Diaries, Chapter Two).

   "Today, emo seems to be growing into more of a scene of all-ages, D.I.Y.-minded kids that appreciate music that comes from the soul, more than any particular style," explains Szuch. "Bands involved in the scene all have their own take on it, some more hardcore, some more dynamic, some more pop, some more math-rock and intellectual, some more screaming and some more rock-based. Whatever works to give me that feeling inside is OK by my standards."