Jimmy Eat World famously shifted their sound into pop punk territory on Bleed American, though given that their first album is essentially 90s pop punk and they then shifted into emo on Static Prevails, maybe they just went full circle. In the late 90s and early 2000s the sound of pop punk was changing in a lot of quarters, as a generation of musicians who had been on a steady diet of pop punk and emo punk combined the two into the sound that is most commonly associated with emo starting around that time.
Derail fit into that mold well enough, but they lack the glossy finish that their more mainstream contemporaries had. Derail's first album, Picturesque, also landed in 1999, too early to capitalize on emo's brief time in the spotlight, predating a lot of the bands that would take this sound, overproduce the hell out of it, and make it at least semi-popular. Derail are a pop punk band, no question, but it's also unquestionably emo-pop. That opening to 'Shifty Eyes' gets my head bobbing every time. Their last release is the Recyclable 7" (also called Sticks To You), which showcases a band moving more into midwest emo territory, and it's a shame we never got a second LP. I've also included some demos of unknown provenance.
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