the emo canon

I think Saves the Day's Stay What You Are should be included, because it definitely is a prime example of where the "emo" thing went in the early 2000s. I hesitate bringing them up because I know how loathed they are, but I would argue that Dashboard Confessional's The Place You Have Come to Fear the Most should be a part of the canon. Not because its a good record, but because, again, its a pretty solid example of the genre's evolution over time. For a better Carraba related album though, maybe Further Seems Forever's The Moon is Down.

I also might toss out Bright Eyes' Letting Off the Happiness.

1985. What did you do when you were 16?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePxcBXsmuuI

nice!

1988, and more heard (and therefore ripped-off) at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6DjkIloPpA

Late '89, unreleased, commonly bootlegged, the best stuff we did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AevJDUQv8Mw

hey I remember that second song alright! the singing's not really my thing, but the music still stands up so kudos to that m33d3r guy

Jawbreaker - Bivouac
Sense Field - Building
Grade - Under the Radar (or is that to punk-ey/screamy)
Farside?

boy's life: departures and landfalls
still life: from angry heads with skyward eyes

oh also kudos to lamp for mentioning knapsack

oh yeah, also:

split lip/chamberlain: fate's got a driver

does hot water music count? can't remember the STICT emo definitions. lol what was that ridiculous website?

and if anyone wanted me to assemble a third-wave canon (say, saves the day on) i could

haha www.fourfa.com! xp

always loved how it labels pretty much all the bands everyone i've ever met would consider 'emo' as 'post-emo indie rock' #shotsfired

but yeah:

hot water music - no division

+ that get up kids coalesce cover

American Football - s/t

This is probably my favorite "emo" album ever, but/because it's like a post-rock version of emo.

i need to get that moss icon set when i have the money. will be niceafter only having mp3s all these years

small brown bike - dead reckoning

worse/'most emo' band name ever

well i did it anyway

cursive: domestica
the get up kids: four minute mile
the get up kids: something to write home about
saves the day: through being cool
saves the day: stay what you are
taking back sunday: tell all your friends
brand new: deja entendu
brand new: the devil and god are raging inside me
thursday: full collapse
fall out boy: take this to your grave
say anything: ... is a real boy

I was never personally all that into emo, but references to Small Brown Bike and Mock Orange are super-nostalgic for me b/c I had friends who liked/played basement shows with them in the late '90s.

Oh yeah, thats a good list of latter day emo albums. Good call on the first TBS record.

really loving that Words Come Back track, TWU!

I know I've said this elsewhere but I saw The Hated in an Indiana cornfield in 1989 and they were awesome. I even did an interview with them that is preserved on video. I will totally buy a reissue, glad to hear it's in the works. I used to have one of the tapes and both singles, but I sold them like a dumbass when I got really into noize.

Glad you dug it, Thermo. That song has been described as the Ur Document of emo, 'cause it was the first song of pain we did that didn't go druggy in the middle.

We played a Bloomington basement in August or September '88, sleeve, and that was our last show in Indiana -- are you thinking of that show? Or maybe an earlier one, without me (I don't mean "me" per se, I am using it as an abbreviation for "that M33d3r person" -- also by "we" I mean "the Hated", whom I feel like I know from their wonderful recordings) -- did the bass player have a Rickenbacker or a Yamaha headless?

Another small band that didn't get a lot of national recognition but made scene waves was Ashes from Washington, D.C. - really pretty female vocals over palm-muted crunchy chords.

let me also recommend Scarab (who partially went on to become One True Thing). You can download their whole discography here: http://porvidapunk.blogspot.com/2011/09/scarab-discography.html

Lamp wrt to:

ive always sorta gravitated towards the beardier, slower stuff

were you ever in to Three Mile Pilot?

I love Three Mile Pilot!

i'm glad saves the day and lifetime are getting mentioned-- i dont consider them emo canon but they are v v awesome and important

also thank you for posting The Hated-- how had i never heard of this band?

early At The Drive In also def belongs somewhere in or close to the canon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdkBqI6dhg

Sure, ATDI should fit in. What about Quicksand? They were a bit closer to the weird 1994-era alternative/metal crossover but are considered a major influence on a lot of bands. And if we consider Lifetime, than their spin-off band Kid Dynamite could also be a contender.

does hot water music count

i feel like everyone that was talking about braid back then was also talking hwm

Probably also Goddamnit and the self-titled singles comp by Alkaline Trio probably deserve a spot.

my missus is all about this stuff

find myself quite partial to braid frame and canvas

cant remember if it's save the day or get up kids i cant abide, probably both tbf

Has anyone agreed on when 3rd wave emo started? im not sure you can really say the get up kids are 3rd wave when they started the same time as some 2nd wave bands!

Anyway I'll rep for Something to Write Home About all day long. and promise ring too

im not sure you can really say the get up kids are 3rd wave when they started the same time as some 2nd wave bands!

eh i rope them in b/c take this to your grave is essentially a tribute to four minute mile

anyway at gunpoint i'd say third wave began with something to write home about and through being cool in '99

probably also an argument to be made for 2001-2002 with your favorite weapon and tell all your friends

i only ever dabbled in this stuff so i wont argue, but in my mind they were 2nd wave but it hardly matters.

i forgot how much i liked still life!

i should go listen to them again

van pelt y'all

were you ever in to Three Mile Pilot?

ive never even heard of them! this thread has been super informative cuz i was at best a dabbler in late emo i just had all the bright eyes cds i mean all the bright eyes cds

texas is the reason is otm i was trying and failing to remember them last nite

[if I started posting like Mohinder and Angel Hair youtubes or whatever it would effectively ruin the thread right

Not for me.

i will rep for the 1st 3 bright eyes albums and commander venus. And anyone who hates Desaparecidos can fuck off!

I already knew and liked "Everysong" but I was glad for the other two Hated links!

AG otm, Desaparecidos is easily the best thing Oberst has ever done (and I'm likely more of his stan than anyone else on this board) and I keep hoping the rumors of another album come true one of these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZtgoTQRH4c

i was rocking dashboard in the car this week. saints + sailors, vindicated... no screaming infidelities tho, or hands down.

i like some of his more recent stuff too - belle of blvd is not bad, thick as thieves, get me right was a jam

(Angel Hair - Pregnant with the Senior Class = classic for me)

oh man Lampski you gotta hear this record:

http://i.imgur.com/w26gk.jpg

def too post-rock/post-hardcore/almost proggy to be emo canon but def of the same universe.

and they covered eno!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yzp7lszaO0

that is a pretty solid list!

thought this revive might be about Billy Corgan complaining about not being included in a book about emo:

losing my mind at the idea that Billy Corgan is mad Smashing Pumpkins are “left out” of emo history pic.twitter.com/CpM8Kalb0z

— Leor Galil (@imLeor) July 17, 2023

something for you emo-heads to chew on

Brooklynvegan 50 Best Punk & Emo Albums: 2015-2019
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/50-best-punk-emo-albums-2015-2019/

At the tail-end of 2019, we published a list of the 100 Best Punk & Emo Albums of the 2010s. Making a best-of-the-decade list at the end of a decade is standard practice but the timing does have a few drawbacks. How do you compare an album that’s just a few months old to albums you’ve lived with for most of the decade?

Now that we’re halfway into the next decade, we thought it’d be a good idea to look back on the 50 best punk & emo albums of the second half of the 2010s (2015-2019), the ones that are all now five to nine years old, like the ones from the first half of the 2010s were when we first made that list. As you’d probably expect, there are some albums near the top of this list that were also near the top of our original decade list, but there’s also so much that’s different about this list. Not every album reveals itself immediately (most don’t), and our perspective on the late 2010s continued to change and grow throughout the first half of the 2020s. This list includes stylistic departures that were divisive upon release but became growers over time, and it also includes albums by some now-widely-loved artists whose greatness became much more obvious throughout the early ’20s than it was in 2019. Albums themselves are set in stone once they come out, but impacts of albums are always evolving. Similarly, lists are helpful and fun tools but they’re also built to be updated and revisited. Most best-of-the-’90s lists that were created in 1999 probably didn’t include American Football and Duster. Best-of-the-’80s lists created in 1999 probably didn’t include Bleach. So on and so forth.

It says “punk & emo” in the headline, and for the purposes of this list, that includes punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, metalcore, ska, and various forms of punk/emo-adjacent music. Some of these albums could also be on a metal list, and others could also be on an indie rock list. Genre definitions can be just as subjective and debated as music taste.

Representing five years with 50 albums isn’t easy, and there were a lot of others I wished I could’ve included on this list but had to draw the line somewhere. (It’s also one album per artist, to make room for as many artists as possible.) I’m 100% sure that if I revisit the list in another five years, it’ll look different then too. As for the ranking, that would probably change if I revisited the list in another five weeks; at a certain point, the ranking just gets a little superfluous when you’re dealing with 50 albums that are all super important. As far as I’m concerned, lists like these aren’t about establishing a concrete canon; they’re about having a constant conversation.

Read on for my picks of the 50 best punk & emo albums of 2015-2019…

I had forgotten about that Fiddlehead record, it was really good. A lot on here I need to check out.

4. Paramore – After Laughter (2017)

do ppl really rate this one higher than the s/t? i remember being pretty disappointed at the time, might need to revisit

OMG i just realized that it was 2015-2019, not 2010-2019 IGNORE ME

some people do prefer after laughter to the s/t tho, they’re out there. i get it