Late Night Television

 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.

11 love songs for your shallow, broken heart + a personal account of how i've failed at everything