Audreys Dance were a short-lived midwest emo band from Germany; I believe they were based in Nuremberg. They formed from the ashes of Jennifer Eight in the late 90s and were active for an indeterminate amount of time after. They appeared on a 2001 compilation but that could have been posthumously, and it's possible they weren't around past the turn of the millennium.
It's an continual emo tragedy that far, far too few bands have tried to sound like Christie Front Drive. Perhaps this is due to that seminal band's fundamental ineffability, as even the handful who have made the attempt never truly sound like CFD. But some have come close, and Audreys Dance came closer than most. Their mercilessly small discography is a straight shot of pure mid-90s midwest emo and in its best moments comes tantalizingly near to sounding like B-sides from Anthology.
The band's entire recorded output consists of three songs. The first two are on the self-titled 7" released on the great Millipede Records in 1999. The third is a compilation track, also from Millipede, on the love still has its meaning comp. According to the owner of the label, the band has live material that has yet to be digitized, so here's hoping that sees the light someday.
Brazilia were a band from Chapel Hill, NC, formed in 1999 and active until 2003. They were a Kinsella-influenced screamo band, incorporating some elements from that style of midwest emo and indie rock as well as post-hardcore and math rock. They were a very diverse band and an equally energetic one, mashing up multiple styles and ripping through songs with that Cap'n Jazz kind of abandon. The early years of the band were as chaotic as their music, featuring lineup changes and members missing for various reasons. By 2001, things seem to have solidified enough for Brazilia to release their only full-length album on Braeburn Records, home to emo luminaries Pictures Can Tell. The band would call it quits in 2003, its members headed in different life directions.
Brazilia's first release was 2000's rspd 7", which features a less emo sound than the subsequent album, at times sounding kind of like a mashup of hardcore and The White Stripes. I know it looks like the cover image is really low-quality, but it's actually a high-resolution scan of the badly compressed image they used. It was followed in 2001 by the album Pants Tight: Arms Crossed. In 2002 they released a split 7" with The Weapon (this appears to be The Weapon's only release; they were kind of an instrumental post-hardcore jam band, judging by their two tracks), and then put out their last recording, the Phlogiston EP, in 2003. I've also included an unreleased track the band put up on their website, which was recorded during the 7" sessions.
Four Wheel Drive were a band from Essen, Germany, active between 2000 and 2001. They put out two official releases, one on Hometown Caravan and the other on Millipede, and a self-released demo tape. That's pretty much all I know about them. They never had a website and their name makes them nigh impossible to Google. I don't even have a photo of them. Though I suspect they were formed in the late 90s, I can't prove it. Musically, they were a combination of pop punk and emocore—think Hot Water Music and you're in the right ballpark.
The band's entire output consists of six songs. Their first release was a demo tape, DLX, but I don't know what year. It could be 2000, or 1999, or even earlier. They followed it up with a three-song self-titled 7" single in July of 2000. In 2001, their last release was a track on the love still has its meaning compilation.
Cheswick was a band from Orange, California, formed by two former members of emo mainstays One Hundred Words for Snow in 2000 and active until 2003. Musically, Cheswick was in many ways a continuation of that earlier project, one which advanced the indie rock tendences of One Hundred Words to make it a primary component, rather than an influence. The result is very much in the vein of other bands combining late 90s emo with indie rock, such as Apple of Discord, Race for Titles, or Miracle of 86. Cheswick even have a few songs that remind me of I Blame the Scenery-era Reubens Accomplice. There's quite a bit of midwest emo in the mix, too, which I appreciate.
The band started out with a live performance on KUCI radio and a three-song demo in 2000 called Three Songs Recorded in Greg's Bedroom. Two of its tracks would be rerecorded for the band's first EP, 2001's better than my best dream, what would end up being Cheswick's only album release. Over the next two years they would contribute to three different compilations before calling it quits in 2003. At their last show, the band distributed a compilation of various tracks called Buh-Bye.
Be sure to check out vocalist Chris Whyte's latest project, Sleep Pod Two. The band's guitarist also has solo work up on Bandcamp.
Late Night Television were a band from Philadelphia. Started in 1995 as a solo project for the output of vocalist Matt Kelley, he eventually assembled a band and they were putting out records by 1998 on what appears to have been Kelley's own label, Route 14. Their list of influences on their old Interpunk band page includes The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Superchunk. I mostly hear the latter, but the other two are present.
At times, the line between indie rock, alternative rock, and the more mainstream(ish) forms of emo seems thin enough to be insubstantial. I think this is why hardcore-focused purists sometimes argue that midwest emo and emo pop do not belong under the umbrella of emo at all, but instead should be shunted into some other, more radio-friendly camp. Imagine Mineral's "Gloria" coming on the classic hits radio right after "Alex Chilton" and you may understand that there's a little more granularity to the situation than that. I think my stances on the genres are made clear enough by this blog, but I'm not interested in arguing the point; and in this case, I don't think I'd even make the argument that Late Night Television were an emo pop band—not on the first album, anyway. But they were an emo-influenced band (a claim I couldn't make for Zykos), and that puts them in my purview.
Kelley started the project in 1995; the band saw it's first release in 1998 with a 7" single. I have little doubt there's material that either the band or just Kelley recorded between '95 and '98, but I can't find any of it, and unfortunately have also not been able to get my hands on the 7". A year later they put out their first album, 11 Love Songs For Your Shallow, Broken Heart. The liner notes show the songs are copyrighted from 1996-1998, so the album may include songs that Kelley wrote when he was still solo.
It would take another three years for the band to gestate that second album, A Personal Account of How I Failed At Everything (while even the first album is at least emo-adjacent, it must be said that the album\song titles and lyrics make both seem even more emo than they are in practice). It amps up the emo pop influences, to the point they reminded me of Chocolate Kiss sometimes, and even, at other times, more aggressive bands—"white picket fences" has some genuine emo rawness.
An archive of the Route 14 site shows the band also had a live recorded session on WPRB in 2003. At the moment I can only offer FLAC downloads for both LPs.
