Andherson

Andherson were a band from Arizona, active from the mid-90s to somewhere around the year 2000. Over the course of their relatively long but strangely unprolific career, they went from playing midwest emo to something closer to emo pop. Each progressive release sees the band sanding off some rough edges and growing more melodic.

Their first release was in 1995, …this great cobalt moment…, which is a midwest emo 7" but pulls a lot from emocore. The band wouldn't release another record until 2000, a gap possibly explained by their relocation to Berkeley, California, and then subsequent return to Arizona. The five-year absence of recordings is suspicious—it feels like they must have recorded something during that time. If they did, it's currently lost.

After going back to Arizona, they released a three-way split with Fivespeed and Before Braille on Sunset Alliance. The description on Amazon claims this is the band's only studio release, which is obviously false, and only casts more doubt on the nature of their discography. For whatever reason, this obscure split from an indie label has its own Wikipedia entry, which is the only reason I know anything about Andherson at all. The band would close out their career with a contribution to The Emo Diaries, Chapter Six, in 2001, which sees them moving somewhat towards emo pop. I imagine a theoretical full length would have sounded like that song.

I have labeled these assembled tracks as the band's discography, but in this case especially it should be stressed this is the band's known discography.

Andherson Discography

Palentine

 

This will be a short post. Palentine were a band active for an unknown period in the early 90s, and may have been from Maryland. That's all I know about them.

They played a fusion of emo and noise rock and put out one release, 1994's File .004. With four songs, I think it's technically an EP, but with a meager play time of seven and a half minutes it's basically a single. Based on what can be heard on it, it's a shame we never got File .005 or whatever their next release might have been called, because it's genuinely interesting music. Noise rock has always been an influence on post-hardcore and emo, but usually a distant one. Here, it's fully half of an experimental mix.

File .004

Red Eye Nine

 Red Eye Nine were a band from Boston, active in the late 90s. They were on Lunch Records along with fellow Bostonian emo\post-punk band Helicopter Helicopter. This review on AllMusic seems to indicate they went through some lineup changes during their brief existence. I know very little about them, to the point the preceding sentences sum up pretty much everything outside of their single release.

The band's only release appears to be 1999's Standing On Ceremony, a shouty blend of emocore, post-punk, and a couple dashes of post-hardcore and emo pop. The result is more easygoing than you'd probably expect. They sound kind of like a more laid back Life at These Speeds. I really enjoy this album, it's surprisingly relaxing for something so obviously rooted in emocore and post-punk (emocore-lite? post-emo-popcore punk?). Sometimes it reminds me of The Van Pelt, though not as focused on spoken word and without as much midwest emo. At other points it's more reminiscent of something like The Lapse.

Standing On Ceremony

Midwest Blue

 

Midwest Blue were a band from Chicago, active from 2001 to 2005. They were an emo pop band, with an output that runs the gamut from almost pure pop punk to third wave emo pop and everything in between, with plenty of influences from post-hardcore, midwest emo, and indie rock. They were pretty diverse; this review calls them out as being possibly too diverse, though I don't agree (I'm also not sure what the reviewer's problem is with the first four tracks of the LP, which are perfectly fine). 

The band's first release in 2002, The Columbus Conspiracy EP. In 2003 they released their only full-length album, Remembering to Forget, which was released by Post-436, which also put out two releases from emo pop contemporaries Woke Up Falling. 2004 saw the release of the Alarm Clock EP, which was their last release before breaking up. In 2006 the band put out a posthumous compilation of rarities which included the Alarm Clock EP. The archived Midwest Blue website claims there was an unreleased song called 'What Can I Say' intended for the In And Out Of Love compilation, which was never released. But this page from vocalist Sam Swanson's site says the song is called 'Kangaroo Style' and is included on the Sides compilation, so perhaps the name of the song changed at some point.

Remembering to Forget and Sides are available through Bandcamp, but the page omits The Columbus Conspiracy EP.

Midwest Blue Discography

Raise Kain

 Raise Kain were a band from Rotterdam, in The Netherlands. They were active from 1997 to 2002, after which they called it quits. The history I've pieced together from web archives is at odds with the one posted here on Skate Punk Memories, which claims the band changed all its members but one between their first album and last release. This does not appear to be true; all the same members are credited on both releases and the list of names on their final webpage farewell remains consistent, so I'm not sure where the other blog got that information from.

The band's first album, Last Action Heroes, is available at Skate Punk Memories, and that's a fitting archive. But while the album is unquestionably a work of pop punk that fits under the broad umbrella of skate punk—and features a few tracks that could have easily been blaring in the background of a Tony Hawk game—it also has a more dour quality than you might expect, with a lot of influence from emo pop. These influences would come to the fore on their subsequent EP, which leaves skate punk behind in favor of 90s-style emo pop\pop punk with some post-hardcore influence.

The band's first release was a 1998 demo tape called Coronation, which I haven't been able to find. In 1999 they released their only full-length, Last Action Heroes. Their last release was the Airborne EP, released either in 2001 or 2002, I have sources for both dates. What's interesting is that their website makes no mention of the EP in 2001, and then in 2002 the page changes to a goodbye message, so it's possible the EP was released posthumously.

Airborne

all out

 

This post was a very long time in the making, for reasons specific to Japanese emo that I've already discussed. The short version is that CDs are still popular in Japan and exporting them is very costly when its possible at all. But Japanese emo was and continues to be some of the best stuff around, so I'm glad to be able to offer another band from that scene.

All Out were possibly from Aichi Prefecture, formed in 1997 and active until 1999, at which point three of the members would form The T.V. Dinners. If considering the first half of All Out's discography, their sound would remain mostly congruent between projects, a mix of emo pop and pop punk with some of the rough elements of melodic hardcore intact; 'emo punk,' as it's sometimes called. However, in the back half the band began to bring in far more midwest emo influences.

The band existed long enough to put out a couple demos and two splits. In 2017, they reunited to put together their semi-posthumous discography, the end of serenade (the Mineral reference is blatant, but earned in the second half). I say 'semi'-posthumous because they recorded a new song while briefly reunited.

It's great that the band cared enough about their legacy to put together a discography nearly twenty years later. Sadly, the end of serenade is the worst kind of discography: an incomplete one. The band released the new song as a single, 願い, and on that single also included four songs from their first demo that aren't on the discography either. That makes five missing songs from a discography that's already only nine songs long, and it's entirely possible there are other missing tracks as well. 

I was unable to find a retailer that had the single in stock and was also willing to ship to the States, so the end of serenade is all I have to offer.

the end of serenade

The Radio Silence

 

The Radio Silence were a band from Raleigh, North Carolina, active in the mid-2000s. The history of this band remains an unknown to me. Their name is a common metaphor, making them difficult to Google, and the Wayback Machine has no working archives of their website (the same address now redirects to Bandcamp). The show they played for their LP debut had One Amazin' Kid as an opener. The liner notes don't shed any light on the band's history or discography, save for mentioning that the album was a long time in production.

Musically, The Radio Silence are similar to the other bands working in the same sphere who were also too late to be considered part of emo's second wave despite having much more in common with that period than the third wave. Their sound exists on a sliding scale between midwest emo and indie rock, with the needle inclined towards the latter. There's no mistaking the midwest emo in their makeup, however. On their old MP3.com page, the band listed some other acts they considered similar and one of them was The Gloria Record, which is honestly a pretty good comparison.

In 2004, the band had what I assume was an EP or a demo called Demonstration, which they made available at shows prior to releasing their full-length album, Narrative, in 2006 (the album has a 2005 date on the artwork but it must have been delayed). Demonstration isn't on the Bandcamp and aside from the mention in this article, I can't find any trace of it. The band also had an acoustic demo from 2003 called last night and the rest of your life, recorded prior to the project gaining a full line up. I don't know how many tracks it had, but I've recovered two, both of which were rerecorded for the album. There was also a live version of "police station, 5 a.m." that was once on MP3.com but isn't available in the archives.

narrative + demo tracks