grace like gravity

Grace Like Gravity were a band from Denver, Colorado, active in the early 2000s and possibly before or after, as I'll get to. Last.FM claims they broke up shortly after the release of their EP, which implies they called it quits in 2005. They played a blend of pop punk, mainstream post-hardcore, and emo pop. While the era of their existence implies a certain connection to the strongest currents in emo at the time, they really have more of the 90s emo punk scene in them, which is to say these guys were closer to Eleventeen than Hawthorne Heights. They played with Midtown and Fall Out Boy, which gives you an idea of where they were coming from.

Their first album was in 2004, nothing we say leaves this room. Its combination of emo pop and post-hardcore works quite well, and the addition of some hardcore vocals give it an edge a lot of their contemporaries lacked. Album closer "liar campaign' is a real highlight. In 2005 they released an EP called No Sense of Urgency, which is aiming for something different. The band swerves towards the kind of pop punk/dance punk that one might expect from Panic! At The Disco. The EP lacks that extreme level of polish and doesn't fully commit to the change, retaining a lot of their previous characteristics, but it's still an indication that they might have been headed in a different sonic direction.

Their third release is where things get vague. The Eisenhower Plan is, theoretically, their second album. There are two problems with this. First off, they are supposed to have disbanded in 2005, and the album was released in 2016. Secondly, it sounds nothing like the EP. I don't know for sure what's going on and I haven't been able to find any information on the LP at all, it just appeared on streaming along with the rest of the band's discography; however, according to Spotify, it was added a year after the other two releases, which have a date of 2015.

I don't think this is really a second album; not one that was released in 2016, anyway. I think The Eisenhower Plan is either an unreleased second album, recorded before the band broke up, or it may be their actual first album. This theory is completely unsubstantiated, but I find it compelling based on the album's sound, which does not at all follow from the EP and even lacks so much of the 2000s emo influence from nothing we say leaves this room. Compared to that album, Eisenhower might as well be MxPx. That's an exaggeration, of course, but it illustrates the divide. The purer emo-pop punk of Eisenhower could be an indication of earlier work. Or, maybe the band really did get back together and drop a whole new album eleven years after their previous release, who knows.

Thanks to life.love.regret86 for pointing me in this band's direction.

grace like gravity

steven shoelace

 Steven Shoelace is an artist from Portland, Oregon, active beginning in 2021 and releasing new material as of this post. His music sits at an intersection between bedroom pop, lofi indie rock, emo pop, and midwest screamo. This is a simplification and perhaps even an oversimplification because his attachment to genre is far from slavish and can shift pretty dramatically between releases. In output, he is as I described, but in ethos he is experimental.

Classifying his discography is a bit difficult because he hasn't stated in his releases what is considered an EP or an album, so I'm going by track number. There are a number tracks and compilations dating back to 2021 on Soundcloud, including an album, uneven shoelace. However, it looks like his first official release is the "i need you" single in 2022, with two other releases following that same year: the cat medallion EP and a second EP, SCARY! His first full-length, IN HELL, dropped 2023; his most current release came in 2024, Garden Snakes. I also have a release called Scary Cat (or Scaredy Cat on the CD label) which appears to be the first two EPs combined.

Big thanks to Steven for sending the physical releases over. I don't believe I have ever scanned a note included by an artist, but this one was so quintessentially emo in form and content that I knew I had to.

steven shoelace

The Player Piano

This blog has been less active lately, and while there are a few factors that contribute to that, the primary one is this: my ever-rising standards. If you go back and look at my earliest blog posts, you can see that I posted whatever I had on hand, whether that was a single EP or several albums. I might include more of the band's discography if I had it, but otherwise I was content to introduce readers to a band and leave it at that. Over time, as I assembled more and more full discographies, that became the new standard, resulting in an endless limbo of searching for former band members, scouring internet archives, and waiting for months in the (frequently vain) hope of an answer to many, many messages and emails. Thus, updates are few and far between.

So here's a new update on a very accessible band who are not particularly obscure (by the standards of this blog, anyway) and whose entire output is confined to a single CD. I imagine quite a few of the people who frequent this blog are already familiar with the band, but perhaps you will still enjoy some full art scans and FLAC files.

The Player Piano are the rare emo band with their own Wikipedia page, sparing me the effort of writing a brief biography. Active only briefly in the mid-2000s, they were a part of the largely unrecognized wave of bands combining post-rock with the midwest emo sounds of the 90s. The Player Piano also brought some influences from math rock to the table, though these are pretty subdued. The result is one of my favorite albums, something I especially like to vibe with on road trips. It's just one of those works that sonically resonates with the feeling of crossing the midwest.

The band's only LP was a self-titled in 2004, and it saw a very limited release. The band's legacy mostly comes from their posthumous compilation Satellite, put out in 2007 in Japan by Friend of Mine Records and subsequently imported by Sunset Alliance, who released the original LP. Including two additional tracks, it has apparently proven popular enough to warrant represses; my copy was made as recently as 2019. It includes an insert with a lengthy interview that I can't read, but along with the liner notes you can see what appear to be some of the band's influences, including Explosions in the Sky, Christie Front Drive, This Will Destroy You, Mineral, American Football, and Always the Runner. It's a fantastic list that illustrates what the band was aiming for, and they nailed it.

Satellite

Into Ashes

Into Ashes were a band from Tallahassee, active from 2001 to 2002 and probably a bit before that, as their website redesign in 2001 seems to hint at some other, unarchived version of it existing prior to that year. They released one EP on Copter Crash Records, a label which was no stranger to emo, hosting releases from The Goodboy Suit and The Saddest Landscape. While their only release came after the turn of the millennium, their sound is a very late-90s mix of midwest emo and emo pop, with the addition of some strong influences from post-hardcore. They remind me a lot of Camber, which is to say they were also great (in a secondary layer to that comparison, they toured with Brandston). I can't find any evidence they had another release besides the if you need a reason EP in 2001.

The fifth track is titled 'hum' on the back tray insert but called 'Balcony' in the liner notes. I believe the back insert is correct as the song is named 'hum' on their website.

if you need a reason

Small Town Hero

Small Town Hero were a band from Connecticut, formed either in 1998 or sometime before that. Their website was first archived in 1999 but there is a video of them playing a show in 1998. By 2002 they had lost their lead singer and called it quits after that, though I can't say exactly when. Musically, they were a combination of pop punk, emocore, and melodic hardcore, with most of the emphasis being on the first two.

Their first official release was the and so it goes… EP in 1999, though considering their existence prior to that year it's possible there was a demo before the EP. The track listing on the artwork is comprised of four songs but there are actually six on the CD—I sourced the names for the last two songs by matching the lyrics from an archive of the band's 'songs' page. In 2000, the band released a split with A Voice of Reason on Triple Crown Records, Things to Do in Connecticut When You're Dead. This was their last release, but they did post two additional songs to their website that were intended to be on a forthcoming full LP release. Sadly, that album never came to be and the songs are not recoverable.

Small Town Hero

Beta Minus Mechanic

Beta Minus Mechanic were a band from Syracuse, NY, active from the mid to late 90s and possibly for a little bit after that, though it's unlikely they were together long past the turn of the millennium. Most of their work was released on Crisis Records, which was a strange subsidiary of the legendary Revelation Records. Crisis was—at least initially—focused on female-fronted bands, according to Discogs. Why Revelation couldn't just host these female-fronted bands is a mystery to me. One of the band members was in Earth Crisis, giving them a connection to the straight edge scene.

Musically, Beta Minus Mechanic were a 90s emo pop band with a great deal of influence from post-hardcore, alternative, and even a little bit of midwest emo; I've seen comparisons to Ashes and Copper, which I only partially agree with, as Beta Minus Mechanic was more pop-oriented and takes a great deal more from the alternative scene than either of those bands.

I believe the band's first release was the split 7" with likeminded band Holden, followed by the '69 Camaro EP in the same year. I don't have a precise date for either and it feels like the logical progression, but it's possible the EP came before the split. In 1997 the band put out their only LP, Disassembly Required. Three years later in 2000, the band had a very interesting contribution to the Syracuse Hardcore 98.99 compilation: two songs taken from the EP and the LP but rerecorded as spare, piano-and-vocals versions, a somewhat odd inclusion for what is purportedly a hardcore comp. Considering the gap between this compilation and the album, I don't know if the tracks were a posthumous contribution or if the band was still active up to that year.

Beta Minus Mechanic