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diversions
Untickle me emo
By Greg Smith
On-line Forty-Niner
In popular music
lately, the word "emo" has been thrown around to
describe some new bands that are breaking the charts and making
waves on the radio.
Rolling Stone named
emo band Jimmy Eat World in its recent "Hot" issue
as the hot band of this year. In the April issue of Spin,
the magazine purportedly rated emo bands At the Drive-In and
The Promise Ring among the top 40 bands of 2001.
But as evidenced
in Spin's interview with The Promise Ring, bands cringe at
the idea of being labeled emo. If called emo, the band insisted
it would end the interview. This shying away from describing
a musical genre as emo has become prominent and deserved,
due to the fact that no one can really explain just what emo
is.
Emo, as it is now
known, is a term used to describe a broad reaching genre of
mostly independent music groups whose only real connection
to each other is the fact that they do not fit into any other
well-defined genre. It is easy to tell what bands are punk
or ska or hardcore. But when a rock group does not necessarily
fit into a defined group, it is often thrown into the emo
pile so that it is not left undefined.
Emo music is ultimately
described as melodic and emotional music that, more often
than not, does not follow traditional song structures. Most
emo bands write songs that build in intensity and then bring
the listener down only to explode again. Lyrics are sometimes
sad and sometimes ecstatic, but always focusing on the emotion
of the words and the voice.
While this definition
may be satisfactory, it does not begin to describe the variations
in style that purported emo bands offer.
The first tracings
of emo music can be found in the early 1990s. Bands that were
disenchanted by the restrictions of punk, hardcore and grunge
music began to broaden under the influence of indie groups
such as The Pixies, The Smiths and Joy Division. The alternative
revolution of this time brought other new influences to upstart
bands that were striving to be different.
In the mid-1990s,
emo music first made a break into the pop-rock psyche with
Seattle's Sunny Day Real Estate and Los Angeles' Jawbreaker.
Under the guise of alternative both bands made slight breaks
into radio and MTV, with styles that were profoundly different
from anything else out there.
Punk legends Jawbreaker
signed to Geffen Records in 1995 and released the seminal
album Dear You. Dear You has become one of the most important
albums of the supposed emo genre and influenced many bands
along the way.
Seattle's Sunny
Day Real Estate gained some radio and MTV fame with the release
of their first record Diary, a very personal and intense record,
with songs that turned from hard to soft on a dime and were
accentuated by singer Jeremy Enigk's haunting voice. Sunny
Day Real Estate went on to have a song that was featured on
the Batman Returns soundtrack. But both bands met the same
fate, breaking up due to the pressures of their newfound fame.
Today's groups
are so varied it is hard to believe that they can be lumped
together. Some groups like Orange County's Gameface and Farside
and Los Angeles-based Samiam have solid roots in punk rock.
These bands utilize
slowed-down punk beats with driving guitars and vocals that
are angst ridden. Lyrics can vary from Gameface's love ballads
to Samiam's heartbreaking stories of an abusive father.
On the opposite
spectrum, some bands approach their music from a jazz perspective.
Mid-western band Sharks Keep Moving has an almost free-form
jazz approach with little or no vocals, letting the music
tell the stories. Missouri-based band The Casket Lottery has
a tight blend of jazz rhythms with hardcore riffing and dual
vocal harmonizing while using intricate time changes that
keep foot tapping near impossible.
With so many bands
tossed into the emo genre, it has ceased to be a genre and
has become more of a nondescript group of bands that just
do not fit in anywhere else.
Fans of the music
and the bands themselves have become so jaded by the use of
the word that they cringe at the very mention of it. But with
bands like Jimmy Eat World, The Promise Ring and The Get Up
Kids gaining more and more popularity, emo is sure to break
and become the next big thing in popular music. One can only
hope that the bands can retain the aspects of their music
that has made them different and not fall to the set standards
that govern popular rock.
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