Jejune

Originally formed at Berklee College in Boston, Jejune would thereafter setup shop in San Diego. The band is known in the emo scene primarily for their second album, the emo pop masterpiece This Afternoons Malady. Their other material, which ranges from their early midwest emo to a later sound even poppier than Afternoons, is far less heard. Not helping matters is the band's failure to make the jump to digital (save for, I believe, their posthumous final compilation and some comp tracks, which are\were on streaming at some point). Without either of their albums being made easily available through major platforms, This Afternoons Malady has been making the rounds in emo sharing circles for decades, while their first album is a bit harder to come by, depending where you look—it's a marked difference, however, from a decade ago when I can remember being unable to lay my hands on Junk no matter how hard I looked. Jejune also had some excellent split releases, their most well-known being a split 7" with Jimmy Eat World.

Jejune's sound was initially a chord-heavy version of midwest emo combined with emo pop, and this is the sound you'll hear on their first album, Junk. Normally, this would make that release my favorite. But This Afternoons Malady is just too good to be denied, a sweeping epic of emo pop with endless hooks and big choruses with midwest emo twinkling in the quiet spaces. It's their best work, the perfect midway point between their midwest emo roots and the pop sensibilities that would thereafter take over.

Jejune were prolific in contributions to compilations, but with only a few exceptions, most of those tracks appear on other releases, so I'm going to concentrate on the albums and splits. Jejune started out in 1996 with a split with Garden Variety. Junk was released the next year, along with the split with Jimmy Eat World. In 1998 they put out This Afternoons Malady, and in 1999 had a split with Lazycain. Their final release is the posthumous compilation RIP, which features demos from an unrealized third album and some remastered old songs.

Jejune Discography