Ettison Clio

Hailing from East Lansing, Michigan (like their emo fellows in the ivy crown), Ettison Clio were an emo pop band active in the early 2000s. Their music is primarily a mix of emo pop and pop punk, though there are some midwest emo influences that poke through every now and then. This is especially true on their second album, This Is For The Blue Collars, in a reverse of the trend most bands like this follow where it's the earlier releases that are more emo. That said, on their final release they change sound to mimic split-mates The Beautiful Mistake to the point you'd be hard pressed to notice the changeover if it weren't for the vocalists. 

As of this writing, the band's old website is somehow still up and running, along with a merch store than is tempting if unlikely to yield anything but a Paypal dispute. Ettison Clio put out a demo prior to their first album, 2002's Fragile Simplistic, followed by This Is For The Blue Collars in 2004 and the split with The Beautiful Mistake in 2006. The only other track I've been able to scrape up is a demo version of "Chapter Nine" that the band posted to Soundclick, so I feel comfortable enough calling this a discography.

Ettison Clio Discography

the bicycle project

Now here's a rare album: the bicycle project were a band from Nevada, and that's about all I know about them. They had a fantastic sound, a cross of post-rock and midwest emo. Their closest contemporaries would be bands like The Bitter Life Typecast and The Alexander, but the bicycle project can veer a little heavier in sound than either of them, and also make more use of long passages of ambient noise. The result is a mix of influences that sits at the overlapping points of midwest emo, post-hardcore, and ambient post-rock.

2000's where searchlights are weapons is apparently their only release, and we're lucky it's a full-length. It also clocks in at a whopping one hour and ten minutes, so they made it count.

where searchlights are weapons

the ivy crown

 The ivy crown were a midwest emo\emo pop band from Michigan. Their sound is, in part, a great bit of that late-90s emo pop where the midwest emo really shines through. Anyone who's a fan of Sterling Silver, February Stars Union, or Ribbon Fix will find some familiarity—they even have the dual male\female vocals going on. That said, their sound is a bit heavier on the post-hardcore and early emo influences than you usually see in this genre; it's bass-heavy and uses the quiet\loud dynamics and occasional shouting. In that way, they're a lot like early-Rainer Maria or even Junction.

Their discography consists of one 1999 LP, …after so much red wine, and a self-titled 7" released a year earlier (the 7" comes courtesy of Desperate and Lonely).

the ivy crown Discography

Hankshaw

Hankshaw were an emo pop band from Florida, and probably best remembered in the emo scene for their lead vocalist. Many an emo band has sung about suicide and self-harm, but off the top of my head I can't think of any that have done it quite so angelically as on album opener "Joined in the Sky." Hankshaw may sing that every day they wish you harm, but they don't really sound like they mean it. They were an emo band, but a band on the more approachable side of the genre, catchy and, dare I say it, almost radio friendly. Prior to being Hankshaw, they were a pop punk band called Lazy Susan. Nothing Personal was their debut as Hankshaw, not counting a demo compilation track, and it's their strongest work.

The Nothing Personal LP was followed by the Every Day I Wish You Harm EP and a second, self-titled EP and 7", though the 7" is also known as Maple. Four years later, the band would self-release their second LP, featuring an out-of-left-field hard turn into full on psychedelic groove rock, taking themselves and that album well out of the purview of this blog.

As I write this, the band are only days away from releasing a remastered discography on Bandcamp, so this blog will end up serving as a repository for the original releases. I've also included a discography download for Lazy Susan.

Nothing Personal + Every Day I Wish You Harm + S/T EP

Lazy Susan Discography