This will be an unusually short post for two related reasons. The first is that the sole copy of this album I could find is disc only, so I have no album art save for the cover, which I sourced online. The second is that I know essentially nothing about this band due to reason one. Not helping matters at all, before Pierce The Veil was formed some of its members were in a band that was also called Before Today, and was active during the same time. This has muddied the waters to the point that liner notes were my best chance to learn something, and they just weren't available.
Before Today released one album, either in 2000 or 2001, called Urgency Sense. It's a mix of midwest emo and emo pop, similar to early The Get Up Kids or a band like Lost North Star or Christiansen.
Any frequent visitors of the blog with probably have noticed by now that while it covers all the variations of emo, it tends to specialize in midwest emo. This is a reflection my personal tastes, as the original, 90s midwest emo sound is my favorite form of music. I do enjoy the Kinsella-focused emo revival version of midwest emo, but bands like Mineral, Strictly Ballroom, and Christie Front Drive will always be the best version of the genre to me.
Therefore, whenever I get my hands on an unknown bit of aughts music that purports to be emo, I don't allow myself to build any expectations on the midwest emo front. There are any number of emo pop bands from the 'mall emo' years that namedrop various 90s bands as inspirations and then play the exact kind of emo you immediately heard in your head when I said 'mall emo.' (Every now and then they'll throw me a bone with a nice twinkly part before hitting the same chords again.) So when D.S. Sutton claimed in their bio to be influenced by Sunny Day Real Estate and The Promise Ring, I didn't exactly get my hopes up.
I've rarely been so happy to be wrong.
D.S. Sutton were a band from British Columbia, active from 2001 to around 2004. When they started out, they played genuine midwest emo, similar to other bands that just missed the second wave like Outsmarting Simon, The Autumn Year, and Fly, Mordecai. The Sunny Day Real Estate influence can be felt throughout their excellent full-length Towards The Stars And Falling. It opens with the fantastic, anthemic "They Don't Believe Me." It closes with the epic, nine-minute "Ivan" which shows that D.S. Sutton, like Michael and The Interstate Ten, understood that emo mixes well with strings.
In 2004, the band released the Hope EP with a new lead singer. From the outset, the EP leans more towards the glossy emo pop of their peers that the first completely avoids. That said, they never fully embrace the emo pop aesthetic. The first song, "This Is The Way The World Is Ending," could easily make you think you're about to get another Hot Topic-suitable album, and then on the second song they immediately resume the midwest emo. It's half and half, poised between the genuine indie emo of the album and the emo pop punk of the band's contemporary scene. In other words, if the album is Outsmarting Simon, then the EP is Hot Rod Circuit.
Hope was the band's last release, denying us the chance to hear where they would have gone with a second LP. One of the band members has a current indie pop project called Summer Eyes, and were kind enough to sell me a copy of the otherwise completely unattainable Towards The Stars And Falling.
M.I.J. were a band out of Milwaukee, formed in 1993 and active until around the turn of the millennium. They started out playing emocore, as you can hear on their demo tape, initially taking part in that early 90s scene. By the mid-90s they tempered their sound into something with more pop leanings; their first album, Chewed Smooth Center, is rough-edged emo pop. It is to their second album what The Promise Ring's first album is to their second, a work that straddles their past and future directions. The band wouldn't reach its full potential until its second and last LP, the radio goodnight, a superb slice of emo pop\midwest emo that's as good as anything the 90s ever produced. The climactic, cathartic, achingly beautiful "do you miss?" belongs on the list of all time greatest emo songs somewhere between "For Ivadell" and "Red and Blue Jeans."
After their 1993 demo, the band put out Chewed Smooth Center in 1995. This was followed by the 300 Miles EP in 1996, which includes an early version of "do you miss?" as an indicator of their forthcoming direction. In 1998 they released the Bloo EP, and then ended their career on a high note with the radio goodnight in 1999.
Latitude Blue were a band from the southwest of England, formed around the year 2000 and active to about 2007. They are primarily known for contributing a track toThe Emo Diaries, Chapter Ten: The Hope I Hold Inside. They played a very polished version of indie rock with some influence taken from emo pop. According to their old website, they were finalists in a BBC Battle of the Bands, which makes sense. This is music that's aiming for the mainstream and the emo in it is only an influence, not up front and center.
The band's first release was Don't Lose Your Way, a three-song EP, in 2002. It was followed by their best-known and most available release, Searching For Perfect, in 2003. The subsequent year the band put out a split with Fell City Girl. Their last release was a self-titled EP in 2005. I've also included their track from The Emo Diaries as well as an MP3 that was given out to mailing list subscribers. Technically, the band did record more tracks than this, including a Jimmy Eat World cover of "Believe In What You Want." However, having strongly implied these are not of the greatest quality, the band's vocalist has made it clear he would prefer these not be part of the band's available discography, and I respect that. Not everyone gets to control their legacy.
Also, despite how it appears, I did not leave smears all over the artwork. For whatever reason, it's supposed to look that way.
The Sound of Rails were a band from Omaha, active in the early 2000s and a part of legendary emo label Caulfield Records. They played that jangly, atmospheric, slow burn emo that typifies, to me, the midwestern strain of emo. This is the music of Dirtnap, Boys Life, Forty Nine Hudson, and The Interstate Ten. This is the post-hardcore side of emo, and not necessarily midwest emo. Though many of their contemporaries incorporated midwest emo in this sound (some to the point they are considered true midwest emo bands), The Sound of Rails lean more towards slowcore and math rock than midwest emo.
The band put out two albums on Caulfield. The first, Prelude of Hypnotics, was released in 2000. The follow up, Night Time Simulcast, was put out in 2003 and appears to have been the last gasp of Caulfield. The band also put out a 7" in 2000 and a split with Putrescine in 2002.
And now for something completely different. A few years back, I ordered a vinyl copy of Inside the Whale's superlative album Manifest, and the band member threw in a copy of Lorna Slavin's only release as a bonus. I expected something along the same lines, and that is not what I got. At least, not all the time.
To call this release eclectic would be an understatement. I threw pretty much every genre tag I could think of at this thing and, honestly, I could probably toss in a few more. Lorna Slavin often sound like a completely different band from song to song—sometimes they sound like a completely different band within the same song. This band was clearly a short-lived project, and maybe that's the way it had to be, because it feels like every band member brought in their influences and inclinations from previous bands and when it came time to decide what kind of band they were going to be, the answer was, 'all of them.' It's difficult to imagine a follow up album that wouldn't veer in one direction or the other. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this kind of balancing act would be difficult to replicate.
The 2007 EP Call Them And They Will Rise is Lorna Slavin's only release, featuring six diverse songs.
From the wunderbar Germanemoscene of the aughts comes On When Ready, from Recklinghausen and active in the years around 2003-2004 (this review says they were formed in 1998, but it's the only source I have for that). They spend the majority of their first album doing their best impression of The Get Up Kids circa Four Minute Mile, albeit with a lot more shouting. In that way, they often resemble their emo fellows Three Minute Poetry, a resemblance that grows more pronounced on the second album. Apparently the band had a changeup in guitar players between albums which would explain the changeup in sound. On the second album, the band ramps up the screaming and hits it harder on the guitars, becoming more akin to the post-hardcore of the period. Interestingly, they also ramp up the midwest emo, one of the few bands to move back in that direction on a subsequent work instead of starting there and gradually abandoning the sound.
Their discography is simple enough: their first album, Try Harder, in 2003 and the follow up, Fueled, in 2004. Any demos or unique compilation tracks haven't made it to Discogs or anywhere else that I can find.
