Steven Shoelace is an artist from Portland, Oregon, active beginning in 2021 and releasing new material as of this post. His music sits at an intersection between bedroom pop, lofi indie rock, emo pop, and midwest screamo. This is a simplification and perhaps even an oversimplification because his attachment to genre is far from slavish and can shift pretty dramatically between releases. In output, he is as I described, but in ethos he is experimental.
Classifying his discography is a bit difficult because he hasn't stated in his releases what is considered an EP or an album, so I'm going by track number. There are a number tracks and compilations dating back to 2021 on Soundcloud, including an album, uneven shoelace. However, it looks like his first official release is the "i need you" single in 2022, with two other releases following that same year: the cat medallion EP and a second EP, SCARY! His first full-length, IN HELL, dropped 2023; his most current release came in 2024, Garden Snakes. I also have a release called Scary Cat (or Scaredy Cat on the CD label) which appears to be the first two EPs combined.
Big thanks to Steven for sending the physical releases over. I don't believe I have ever scanned a note included by an artist, but this one was so quintessentially emo in form and content that I knew I had to.
Dina were a band from Liverpool, active from the late 90s to what appears to be 2004, though their timeline is somewhat vague. Over the course of their career, their sound gradually shifted from midwest emo-adjacent emo pop to punk, though they never completely lost their emo leanings. Although they remained an emo band to a variable extent over the length of their existence, they were mostly associated with the UK punk scene of the time, at one point touring with Leatherface.
Their first release (that I have, that is; see below) was Grampus Eight Versus Dina, a split EP with another Liverpool band in 1999. Collective Zine described the production as "pretty rough," which is putting it mildly. I think my copy has been done no favors by CDr rot as well. 2001 saw two releases, and while I believe that the 7" split with The Atlantic Monthly was released first, I can't say that with complete confidence. It features the song 'Sea Murmur,' the lyrics of which provided the name for the band's first full-length; it's Dina's most midwest emo song, and unsurprisingly my favorite track from them. It also appeared on the Erdata Ishee compilation.
The second 2001 release was Electricity Gave Me A Heart Murmur, the first LP and the one most appreciated by the emo community. It's a blend of midwest emo, emo pop, and indie rock, with clear influences from the UK punk scene. It's a pretty laid back album and usually, though not purely, focused on mood rather than energy, which wouldn't be that notable if it weren't for their second album. In 2002 the band contributed an acoustic track to the Postcards From The Heartland compilation, and then 2003 saw their last release, their second full-length Work the Switch. Moving away from the sound of the first album, it's heavier, faster, and fits more neatly within the scene of their contemporaries. Think Hooton Three Car, Blocko, or Servo, and you're in the right ballpark.
My collection is sadly incomplete, and all attempts to contact former bandmembers have thus far failed (I can't even find a picture of them that isn't in the album art). Multiple releases remain unrecovered. There was a CDr called The Owl which had six songs, five of which made their way to Work The Switch, but that leaves one unaccounted for. There was also what appears to be an EP, Lenny the Lion MC, which featured "4 songs off our first demo," implying that there were more than four songs on that demo, and that demo might only be the first of an unknown number. The three songs from the split with Grampus Eight are also from that demo, so which tracks (if any) overlap and which are missing is anyone's guess.
Most confusing of all, there is a release listed as CANT SAY SPLIT 7". The song which the band supposedly contributed to this split is "??????????????" It is unclear if the split was called Can't Say or if it was a split with a band of that name, but it was to be released by Wallride Records. That label is based in Maryland, so it's possible this was planned as a split between Dina and Can't Say from Baltimore. Whatever the case, I don't think it ever came to be.
This blog has been less active lately, and while there are a few factors that contribute to that, the primary one is this: my ever-rising standards. If you go back and look at my earliest blog posts, you can see that I posted whatever I had on hand, whether that was a single EP or several albums. I might include more of the band's discography if I had it, but otherwise I was content to introduce readers to a band and leave it at that. Over time, as I assembled more and more full discographies, that became the new standard, resulting in an endless limbo of searching for former band members, scouring internet archives, and waiting for months in the (frequently vain) hope of an answer to many, many messages and emails. Thus, updates are few and far between.
So here's a new update on a very accessible band who are not particularly obscure (by the standards of this blog, anyway) and whose entire output is confined to a single CD. I imagine quite a few of the people who frequent this blog are already familiar with the band, but perhaps you will still enjoy some full art scans and FLAC files.
The Player Piano are the rare emo band with their own Wikipedia page, sparing me the effort of writing a brief biography. Active only briefly in the mid-2000s, they were a part of the largely unrecognizedwave of bandscombining post-rockwith the midwest emo sounds of the 90s. The Player Piano also brought some influences from math rock to the table, though these are pretty subdued. The result is one of my favorite albums, something I especially like to vibe with on road trips. It's just one of those works that sonically resonates with the feeling of crossing the midwest.
The band's only LP was a self-titled in 2004, and it saw a very limited release. The band's legacy mostly comes from their posthumous compilation Satellite, put out in 2007 in Japan by Friend of Mine Records and subsequently imported by Sunset Alliance, who released the original LP. Including two additional tracks, it has apparently proven popular enough to warrant represses; my copy was made as recently as 2019. It includes an insert with a lengthy interview that I can't read, but along with the liner notes you can see what appear to be some of the band's influences, including Explosions in the Sky, Christie Front Drive, This Will Destroy You, Mineral, American Football, and Always the Runner. It's a fantastic list that illustrates what the band was aiming for, and they nailed it.
The Minor Fall were a band from Leeds, active from 2004 to 2007. There are no working archives of their website, but fortunately their bio is preserved on the Leeds Music Scene website:
The Minor Fall formed in June of 2004 after many drinks with friends and lingering maudlin conversations about how great everything was in 1999. All four members of the band had been plying their trade in various other bands for a while, namely D-rail, And None of Them Knew They Were Robots, Laura Audio and Send More Paramedics, and the germ of an idea was born that the boys in the band wanted to do something more melodic, more influenced by the likes of Minus the Bear, Get Up Kids, Saves the Day and classic Deep Elm/Jade Tree, whilst singer Jenn wanted to try her hand at doing lead vocals for a change.
I've said before that it feels like I mention The Get Up Kids every other post, but their first two albums really were just that influential on the emo scene. The Minor Fall take more from Four Minute Mile than Something To Write Home About, leaning into the midwest emo influences just as that first album did. They also bring quite a bit of post-hardcore to the table as well, with some well-placed riffs and the occasional burst of hardcore vocals.
The band's first release was a demo in 2004, which is fortunately preserved on Soundcloud. In 2005 they followed it up with their only album release, which is self-titled. There is a compilation track called "Ivory Sirens" which is attributed to them, but I tracked down a copy (big thanks to RASSO for providing the compilation) and it appears to be from a different band entirely, which was coincidentally active at the same time in the UK. Either that or they briefly tried a different vocalist and a total change in sound, which seems unlikely.
Autumn Leaf Dance were a band from Upstate New York. Like most college bands, they were short-lived, active from 1993 to 1994. They never toured, and according to their bio wrote only twelve songs, eight of which were recorded for their only release, Learn What Is Taught. The dates on the album confirm it was recorded in 1994, but the metadata from the files of the band's archive website say the record was released in 1995, so I'm choosing to accept that as fact. A couple notable projects came out from ex-members of the band, The Douglas Fir and Sky Flying By.
Musically, Autumn Leaf Dance were closer to first wave emo than the second wave that was cresting at that time; think a slightly more melodic version of Still Life or Portraits of Past's less emocore-based tracks, or maybe a less melodic version of Junction. The songs are moody and distorted but rarely aggressive or catchy, though there are some sporadic exceptions. Some of that comes down to the female vocalist, who never deploys any hardcore vocals, but don't mistake this band for something like early Rainer Maria—they just don't have that kind of pop instinct in their makeup. This is slow emo, but emo nonetheless.
