Christiansen

Formed in Louisville in 1998, Christiansen radically changed their sound at least twice that I know of. While their second incarnation is technically suitable for this blog, I'm really only interested in their original sound. Their post-90s output is readily available on major platforms, which is why I'm making their 1999 minialbum Above Lunar Emissions available here, because you won't find it many other places. It's often the case that when bands omit their early work from streaming, it's an intentional rejection of their formative sounds. I don't know if that's the situation here; Above Lunar Emissions was put out on All Star Records, the only one of their releases on that label. However, Discogs has no other releases for that label and the minialbum has the catalog number ASR1, so it was likely self-released.

Christiansen began life as a late-90s midwest emo\emo pop band, which Above Lunar Emissions attests to. In the early 2000s they traded that sound in for the glossy third-wave emo\post-hardcore that was popular at the time. Years later, they changed their name to Your Highness Electric and released a prog rock\soul album. There is supposedly a pre-Above Lunar Emissions demo called Up Front With The Girls but I've been unable to find it.

Above Lunar Emissions is an interesting album because the moment in time it occupies is mirrored by its musical composition. In 1999, the emo scene was only a couple years away from Bleed American and the explosion of highly-produced emo pop and post-hardcore that would briefly saturate the mainstream (as usual, I'm going to avoid the argument as to whether this music was emo or merely emo-influenced. Either way, it fits the purview of this blog). Christiansen would become a part of that explosion, but first they were a part of the tail end of the previous wave. Above Lunar Emissions is more 90s midwest emo than not, but it has a pop punk energy that is predictive of what was to come.

Above Lunar Emissions