The Gone Overseas

 When talking about emo pop bands on this blog I mention The Get Up Kids so often you'd think I was trying to summon Matt Pryor like Beetlejuice. It's really a testament to them and the legacy of Four Minute Mile and Something To Write Home About that every other emo pop band I write about is doing their best impression of one of those albums, and sometimes both at once. And that is precisely the groove that The Gone Overseas sought to inhabit, and they did it well.

The band was from Lugano, Switzerland. Apparently it's an Italian-speaking portion of the country, which I admit caused me some initial confusion. Prior to becoming The Gone Overseas, they were called Reference 21 from 1997 to 2002 and released two demos under that name, with an earlier third demo released as Il Colera. Some of those songs made it to compilations; I've included two that I found on Youtube, which seem to be tracks that were hosted on the Reference 21 website. As Reference 21, the band's sound was much more post-hardcore\alternative, and some of that made its way into their third incarnation as a noticeable influence.

In 2003, they would release their first and only full length, Where Do You Want To Go, My Heart? with their new name and new sound and then broke up in 2004.

where do you want to go, my heart? + Reference 21 Website MP3s