An Intro to Chicago Emo Revival: Part Two
PRIME REVIVAL (2008–2012)
In 2008, we’ve arrived to the generally agreed upon start to the emo revival. Algernon Cadwallader has just released Some Kind of Cadwallader, an eye opening moment for many and the first major record for emo’s fourth wave. By 2012, we get the bookend on this era, with Glocca Morra releasing Just Married.
The time between those two records is an especially fertile time for the scene and Chicago in particular. We’re seeing several house venues pop up (Strangelight, Summer Camp, Treasure Town) and become important hubs to see local and touring bands. Emo revival as a phrase is still a bit nebulous; it’s all just understood to be under the big umbrella of punk at the time.
There are plenty of shows I could use as examples of the diversity of bills at the time but the best example is Gnar fest 2012, which featured several acts on the verge of blowing up.
CSTVT (2007–2013)
CSTVT’s story is a uniquely Chicago one, more than any other band on the list. Chicago is a transplant city, where a new crop of musicians relocate to for a number of reasons every year. Many of the notable players in this guide are not native to the Chicagoland area and couldn’t boast of going to the Fireside Bowl in its heyday, having to settle for archived YouTube footage. CSTVT is the outlier, with the two guitarists, Nick Wakim and Will McEvilly meeting at a Lawrence Arms show in high school.
That sense of history comes through on Summer Fences, tying together a couple of different threads that came up in part one of this series. It has the grandeur and operatics of EndSeranading, paired with a midwestern punk edge, making sure that no one would mistake CSTVT for indie rock. Listening to Between Berwyn and Bryn Mawr gives me all the proof I need, still standing as the best song they’ve written, capturing the spirit of the band and this period of the emo revival.
Having one landmark record for Chicago emo is more than enough but I can’t help but wonder what LP3 would have sounded like. Echo and the Light was a welcomed shift, with them tightening up, creating their most poppy material yet. But I wouldn’t call it an album in the proper sense. There are two version of this release, one that’s six songs and another that’s eight. The surprise screamo song Laurtec is rumored to be meant for a split with the band of the same name. These circumstances are what ultimately make the record great but it does feel like they were on the precipice of making another seminal record for the genre.
Into It. Over It. (2007-Present)
Even if they’re not my favorite, it would be ahistorical to not include Into it. Over it. Evan Weiss’s work during this period in particular is prolific, starting with the breakout project 52 Weeks and then culminating in his “first record”, Proper. This is only a sliver of his output during this time, not including his many splits and side project Stay Ahead of the Weather. These various pursuits aren’t put together carelessly. Weiss brings an intentionality and savvy marketing that doesn’t come through for a lot of acts during this time. I think of something like Twelve Towns, which compiled several splits into a full length.
Dowsing (2011-Present)
Dowsing’s arrival in 2011 is almost too perfect. Several of the important bands for this era in Chicago were breaking up, along with DIY venues closing like Strangelight and Summer Camp, where Dowsing would play their first show. There was a gaping hole in Chicago’s scene and Dowsing was there to fill it.
All I Could Find Was You, the debut EP, caught on immediately, catching Count Your Lucky Stars attention, starting a fruitful partnership. They were immediately accepted into the emo community, even if they didn’t necessarily sound like their contemporaries. It was a signal that emo pop was starting to emerge during the revival. Singer Erik Czaja doesn’t write in odd time signatures, instead playing in the standard 4/4 rhythm and standard tuning. His riffs are simple enough that anyone could figure them out in a few minutes. Amateur Cartography is basically the same chord shape for the entire song, only shifting up and down the fretboard. Writing a good pop song was always what mattered and still takes precedence to this day, now four albums in.
Grown Ups (2009–2011)
Grown Ups are a natural progression of the previous era, moving beyond screamo towards something much more melodic. It’s a typical journey that can be traced with several bands but the end result is different for each example. Who else would try to play Blink-182 songs through the prism of American Football and actually succeed at it?
Even though we’re well into the era where pop punk and emo have become one, More Songs still feels revelatory and singular — a blueprint for what’s to come for emo in the next decade. Singing about weed wasn’t yet a hackneyed trope. The lyric “I’ve been collecting resin with your bobby pins/That you left under my bed” could have been on a record that came out in the past few years. Unlike the bands that were inspired by Grown Ups, their songs never feel rigid or static. Instead, they are always tumbling forward, putting more compelling ideas into fifteen seconds than most put into a whole song.
Coping (2009–2012)
Coping really captures what makes this era feel so special all these years later. It seemed as if a bunch of people unintentionally tapped into what was called twinkly pop punk at the same time. You get that same feeling of discovery when you put on Lawndale Cassette for the first time. There’s a palpable energy that comes across when I stream the songs through Bandcamp, trying to reach out to you. Its exuberant and youthful, as all great upbeat emo music should be. The only real knock against Coping’s first release is at times it does feel a bit too indebted to its influences to sound like its own thing.
By the time Coping released Nope, their only full length, they’ve settled into an identity and is apparent with the 1–2 punch of Somewhere in Skokie into B(my favorite song of theirs). It still has those elliptical guitar runs that Joe Reinhart popularized but the songwriting is on another level here. There are genuine hooks on here, helped by a more robust recoding. The dual vocals really make the songs pop, adding another layer of desperation. And in true emo fashion, this would be the last thing Coping ever released, leaving fans with a short discography to pour over.
The Please and Thank Yous (2006-Present)
From the start, The Please & Thank Yous stuck out. Here was a band in 2010 playing an extremely weird mishmash of pop punk for the time. They were influenced by equal parts Braid, Lifetime, and The Ergs. It ended up that they were a few years too early and their debut record is a little too lo-fi to capture all the nuances of the band. In a couple of years, Summer Vacation would perfect the sound TPATY was going for.
Also, Marcus Nuccio would join Dowsing, far outpacing TPATY in many ways. These caveats still do not take away how vital the band was for Chicago during this era. Nuccio and singer Geoff Schott championed the bands in the scene and were genuine fans. You can see Nuccio bobbing his head along at the “last” Joie De Virve in 2011, and can also find old Facebook events for old shows he booked, such as at Gnarnia, where his bandmate Erik Czaja lived for some time. Schott’s YouTube channel is littered with live videos from Laurtec, Grown Ups, Warren Franklin, and CSTVT.
Cloud Mouth (2008–2011)
Cloud Mouth doesn’t fit as neatly as the other bands on this list into the box of emo revival. Even Count Your Lucky Stars makes a note of it, saying That Ghost is Always With Me is “the most brutal record in the CYLS catalog honor easily goes to the most recent, breath-taking effort by Cloud Mouth” when it was released in 2010.
The comparisons vary from person to person, and that inability to pin them down makes them singular. Some may call Cloud Mouth screamo, but there’s a melodic flair that traditional screamo bands aren’t interested in. It’s especially apparent on the last release for the band, Keep Well, when they’re writing twisted versions of pop songs. You can also make a Shot Maker comparison but I really feel the spirit of Dischord records when I listen to Cloud Mouth, even naming a song Flex Yr. Head, a reference to a 1982 compilation the label put out.
The story of Cloud Mouth would be incomplete without a mention of the house venue the members ran during their run as a band, which was called Strangelight. It was instrumental in creating a feeling of community for the scene. Its sober space policy would be instrumental for how future DIY spaces would operate. For new Chicagoans, it would be the first place that felt like home. Whenever Strangelight comes up in conversation, I see a look of recognition come across someone's face, as they recall seeing the Snowing/Algernon/1994! tour some time ago. Strangelight still holds a special place in Chicagoans’ hearts all these years later, and makes Cloud Mouth’s impact go far beyond the typical metrics of what we typically view success as.
Mountains For Clouds (2009–2020)
Mountains For Clouds signals that we are officially in the era of the twinkly, Midwest emo guitar style that would dominate the scene. Listening to their 2012 split with Empire! Empire! and Two Knights bears this out. The differences between each band only feel minuscule and not as wide. In future years this homogenization will be stifling, resulting in bands that sound like a xerox of a xerox.
But Mountains For Clouds comes to the American Football indebted sound honestly. Their journey was one of increments, starting as an offshoot from a rap group, and then releasing a primarily instrumental EP in 2010. Slowly, vocals were added, culminating in the album Maybe Its Everywhere. We would have to wait seven years to hear the follow-up record, and would also mean the end of the band. By then the group had taken the project as far as possible, making some of their catchiest songs on the side A and transitioning into Hum-gaze at some points on side B, unintentionally telling the story of where a certain strain of indie rock had transitioned to at the decade’s end.
Parehesia (2008–2011)
One of the quietly influential labels for this period is Ice Age Records, a Chicago turned Philly label running from 2008 to 2016. Its origin starts with Parehesia, a Chicago screamo band, whose member Kris Di Benedetto formed the label to release his bands’ demo. From there the discography includes several bands already mentioned in this article (CSTVT, Cloud Mouth, TPATY), Glocca Morra, and Spirit of the Beehive. Similar to Cloud Mouth, Parehensia plays too important a role for Chicago’s early 4th wave to be left off the list.
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