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Author: JASON GUTIERREZ

I think it is finally time to set the record straight and clear emo's name. Emo is a sub-genre of hardcore punk. It has enjoyed several waves of popularity, the first of such waves coming out of the Washington D.C. hardcore scene during the mid 1980s. Bands like Rites of Spring and Dag Nasty were some of the earliest bands to carry the "emo" tag.

The sound of many of these early emo bands had its roots inside the hardcore scene, which is to say that there was a lot of thrashing, hard-driving guitars, very fast drumming patterns and screaming lyrics that generally had to do with anarchy and the experience of being young in a society that views them as punks. For many early hardcore punk bands, the substance was subservient to the style of the band. Some bands used their shows as arenas to incite violence in the crowd under the pretext of being anti-establishment. It was this environment that many of the first emo bands wanted to rebel against. They began to play in more complex time signatures, add variety and greater melody to the guitar work and write lyrics that held deeper personal significance. They also pursued a point of view that was more easily accessible to the population at large.

This hardcore-influenced emo would more or less die out during the early 1990s when most of the bands broke up. In the void an "indie emo" sound was created, and it was this sound that would prevail through the 1990s, with the best and most influential scenes cropping up in the Midwest.

Those in the Midwest scene had a sound that set them apart from a lot of other emo bands during the 1990s. The Midwest sound was far more calm than most of the other emo in the country. The guitar sound was quieter and cleaner, the acoustic guitar was used more frequently and the lyrics were even more personal and introspective than previously. Towns like Chicago, Milwaukee and Kansas City had very vibrant scenes with bands like The Get Up Kids (in my opinion the quintessential emo band from this period), Elliot and The Promise Ring coming out of these scenes.

This "indie emo" scene gave way around the year 2001 to what I like to call "pop emo." Around this time bands like Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World took the pop music world by storm, and emo went mainstream. The sounds of Dashboard and Jimmy Eat World were very accessible to pop radio audiences with their more or less sunny disposition, hopeful lyrics and very bouncy power chords.

Whether or not these major label emo bands are helping or hurting the rock subgenre of emo is up to interpretation. To me, the best modern emo bands are the ones that people haven't really heard of yet. The Junior Varsity, for instance, is one that blends melodic and hard driving guitars with lyrics that are suitably simple, and yet still holds a power simply because of the common experience to which I can relate.

However, I think the best emo album to come out in recent years was "Deja Entendu" by Long Island band Brand New. Frontman and main songwriter Jesse Lacey writes lyrics with uncommon depth and poignancy for a modern emo band, and the music itself would be best described as Interpol meets Fugazi, which gives the sound a darker edge to it, and opens up the possibility for a new, exciting direction for a type of music that many have been unfairly cast aside as disposable.