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

Brazilia

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.

Brazilia Discography

The Forms

 Genre is a funny thing. More often than not it seems like bands get lumped in with whoever they tour with more than who they sound like, or are allowed to define their own genre when it seems unclear. I would say that this is especially the case with emo, as unwanted a label as it often is, but I'm not sure that's really true. Try to define the edges of indie rock, for example. Very few bands are genre defining, and perhaps only they fit neatly in the box they created.

And then sometimes there are bands which are clearly of a particular genre that just somehow slip through the cracks. In the case of New York's The Forms, I think it might have something to do with the semi-mainstream attention they garnered, including a glowing review for their first album in Pitchfork. They were crowned the next big indie rock band by a bunch of indie rock outlets, and that fact largely papered over their musical inclinations. I have never seen Icarus on a list of emo albums, nor talked about when post-SDRE works like The End of the Rings Wars are discussed. Somehow, this album has the stamp of indie rock all over it, this despite the fact that multiple review outlets drew direct comparisons to Sunny Day Real Estate (The Morning Call had the grace to at least call it "emo-rock," whatever that is).

If this seems a little strange given the comparisons to SDRE, it's absolutely absurd when you've actually listened to the damn thing. Released in 2003, Icarus is mathy, yes, and sometimes art rock-ish, and occasionally aggressive, and maybe even a bit avant-garde, but at all times it is a combination of Diary and LP2, a soaring, operatic work of midwest emo.

The band's follow-up work may also account for their lack of presence in the emo consciousness. Their second album, a self-titled work, sees the band embrace their label and go pretty much full indie rock on it and subsequent releases. Regardless, Icarus stands as a seminal work of midwest emo and if you're reading this blog, you need to hear it.

A note on song titles: I am following the naming conventions of the digipak edition I have, which simply lists the first six songs as 'Stel 1-2', etcetera. While later digital releases have added 'intro' and 'outro' tags to song segments, I'm going with what the band intended in 2003.

Icarus

All Astronauts

The Wayback Machine has preserved All Astronauts' hilariously grandiose bio on their original website, a cosmic bit of hype that definitely sets a large stage for the band while failing to provide basic information. Consequently, I don't know for certain where the band was from, but they were probably in the same area as their record label, Lookalive, in Winston-Salem, NC. Their sound is a cross between the quiet\loud dynamics of emo and propulsive, mathy indie rock, gliding all around these sounds and others from similar genres, including a little slowcore. There are many long passages that sound like the lead in to a screamo track, but are actually headed in a different direction. In some ways they remind me of twisty indie\emo fusion bands like Utah!, though All Astronauts have a much harder emo edge, showing more hardcore roots than you usually find in this sound.

The band's only release appears to be 2004's Navigation Songs. The only other song I know of is a live track that was once available through the band's website.

Navigation Songs

Durian

From the fertile punk grounds of Washington D.C. came Durian, formed in 1997 and active until around the turn of the millennium. Their sound would most accurately be termed a fusion, in that it represents all of its parts more or less equally. I had a hard time tagging their second LP, Sometimes You Scare Me, but settled on math rock \ post-hardcore \ midwest emo \ alternative. I think it could be argued that I should have also added 'progressive.' The vocals alone would lend that argument some weight; they're dramatic, almost operatic at times, heavy on the vibrato and attitude. The midwest emo portion of that wild mix comes and goes, but can be heard clearly at times. "Press Stop" is close to sounding like something off Sunny Day Real Estate's LP2, and at several points they start playing poppy emo chord progressions that wouldn't sound out of place on a Promise Ring album.

According to the band's bio, they released their first album in 1997, shortly after forming. Titled Tomorrow 6:30, it's a much more lowkey work than the aggressive second album. In 1998 they put out a 7" and the following year put a track on the great Pocket Bomb compilation. In 2000, they released Sometimes You Scare Me and disbanded at some point afterward.

Sometimes You Scare Me + Goodwill B/W Dogtrack 7" + Compilation Track

Tomorrow 6:30