Her Only Presence

Her Only Presence were a band from Barcelona (originally Mallorca), Spain, active from 2005 until 2012. The band began as a solo acoustic project for frontman Luis Cifre, who started out playing acoustic emo with some folk influences. After playing with several different lineups in live performances, Cifre would transition the project to a full band following 2009's A Brand New Start. While the majority of Her Only Presence's discography is therefore comprised of acoustic emo pop, the band's last two releases are midwest emo with a vein of post-rock (their 2011 LP was produced by The Appleseed Cast's Chris Crisci, a very apparent influence).

The timing of Her Only Presence's last album makes it tempting to label them an emo revival act, but I think they don't quite fit. Cifre's solo efforts predate the movement by a considerable margin, placing him in the company of other prescient acts like Up Up Down Down or oh my god elephant. The music itself also eschews the Kinsella influence usually seen in emo revival bands, though this is in and of itself not reason to disassociate from the movement as others did the same. In combination, however, I think that Her Only Presence qualifies as a forward-thinking outlier.

The project started with a 2005 demo CDr and two tracks submitted to a Dreamville Records Sampler, only one of which would end up on the first album, Ghost Of The Year, also released in 2005. Two years later, Cifre put out The Hurt Process, another full LP. In 2009 he released A Brand New Start, which featured a fuller sound than previous efforts with more varied instrumentation, a sign of where the project was headed. Then, 2011 saw the project become a band with the release of You're Never Back, the most well-known work of Her Only Presence, put out by legendary UK emo label Engineer Records; the same year, they also contributed a track to an Engineer compilation. The band's last release was in 2012, a split with L'hereu Escampa.

Her Only Presence Discography

once.lost.pictures

Now here's something rather unique: once.lost.pictures were a two-person acoustic band from Iowa, active in the early 2000s; the vocalist was also in Dispensing of False Halos. once.lost.pictures are similar in most ways to other acoustic emo bands—they sound quite close to Full Surrender—but the drum machine, keyboards, and sampling set them apart. At times their sound is eerily prescient of the current emo trap movement, despite being released well over a decade before that music came to prominence. In that particular combination of sounds, these guys were way ahead of their time.

Their only release appears to be the forever.always LP, put out in 2002.

forever.always

Full Surrender

Full Surrender were an acoustic emo band active from 1998 to around 2005. They were possibly from New Jersey, given that's where their label, Jerk Records, was based. Their music is sometimes classified as acoustic screamo, but that's kind of a stretch. There's just not enough screaming to justify calling it that. Their music is essentially acoustic midwest emo with occasional sections of screaming and harder chords. They aren't too different from quite a few midwest emo bands in that sense, especially the ones from the mid-90s who weren't all that distant from their hardcore roots. They are definitely screamo-influenced, but saying they're an acoustic screamo band is going to set the wrong expectations.

Someone from the band posted a brief eulogy for Full Surrender on the band's Last.FM page, but it's light on details. As I said, I'm not certain the band was from NJ, but their label was, and that's also where the second EP was recorded. Their discography seems to mainly consist of two official EPs: 2003's Lines in the Dark, and 2004's The Distance Between. There is also a CDr of unreleased material dated to 2004; this review from 2003 is based on a three song demo, and judging by the track names, it's a separate release. Two of the songs mentioned are on the EPs, but one is not, though I suppose it's possible that the unknown track three from the four song CDr is actually the song "On Soldiers and Enemies" mentioned in the review. The review also links an MP3.com profile for the band, so who knows what they may have had up there. Given the band was formed in 1998, there may be other releases prior to 2003.

Lines in the Dark + the distance between

Unreleased CDr