Emo-esque, huh?
2002-07-26 11:32
Chicago - It's called "emo", short for emotional - music with punk roots
but more personal lyrics, sometimes painfully so. And it's catching
on.
Some serious fans even have a "look" - short, greasy hair, dyed
black with bangs cut high on the forehead; glasses with thick black
frames; thrift-store clothes and chunky black shoes; and make-up, on
anyone.
Nathan Johnson didn't even know what emo meant until he looked
it up on the internet a few months back. Now he has the clothes and the
glasses and likes some of the bands considered "emo", Fugazi and
Sunny Day Real Estate among them.
"It was as if all of the sudden emo was the `cool' phrase on
everyone's lips," says Johnson, who's 25 and from Dallas. "Drop it
among your more mainstream friends and you achieved a sort of
instant cool."
Not that emo is necessarily new. The term has been around since
the mid-1980s when bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace
emerged from the Washington punk scene with more introspective
lyrics. Terms such as "pop-punk" or "emotional hardcore", or
"emo-core" followed.
A rebirth
Now the music and the term are experiencing a rebirth.
And this time, the buzz is surrounding bands more popular with
the mainstream.
Bands being called emo include The Promise Ring, The Get Up
Kids, Pedro the Lion and Dashboard Confessional, whose repertoire
includes such acoustic gut-wrenchers as Again I Go Unnoticed and
Screaming Infidelities.
Even Jimmy Eat World - a mainstream band with definite punk
roots but a decidedly poppy and sometimes even chipper sound - is
making some emo lists.
Unhappy purists call much of it "mall emo" and worry that it's
diluting the genre to the point of meaninglessness.
"It has become a garbage umbrella term," gripes Tom Joyce, a
music fan from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Marissa DiMeo, an emo fan from New York, understands the angst
over labeling music that she says mixes a few genres - punk,
hardcore and "indie" rock, music from independent labels that's
played more often on college and online stations than mainstream. But
she does hear a common thread in emo.
"At its heart are emotionally charged lyrics - love songs with
attitude and edge," the 24-year-old DiMeo says.
Alan Shum (18) agrees that emo is certainly not "stuff you could
easily mosh to", a reference to the body-crashing mobs that often
form next to punk concert stages.
"Emo is softer, gentler music, where artists sing about
unrequited love or depression to more mellow guitar chords," says
Shum, a student at New York University.
He says it can be so soft that his friends use the term to
insult one another and hang it on any song they deem "unnecessarily
emotional".
Shunning the label
Maybe that's why bands - even those getting attention for having
an emo sound - are shunning the label.
Several, including Dashboard Confessional and The Get Up Kids,
declined to be interviewed for this story.
Such a response isn't surprising to Jonah Matranga, a San
Francisco-based singer-musician who performs as onelinedrawing -
and who, in the late '90s, was dubbed the "emo king" by a British
music publication.
A bit weary of the term, he says emo doesn't even mean what it
once did - music that was "aggressively heart on the sleeve".
"Now it's more like 21st century Bay City Rollers. It's kind of
like party music with a sour face on," says Matranga, who prefers
to call what he's doing "eccentric pop".
Still, some up-and-coming bands wonder if the emo label might
work to their advantage.
Critics had called the music of BE, an as yet unsigned Dallas
band, everything from alternative rock to power pop. Then recently,
one of them dubbed it "emo-esque".
Band members scratched their heads, but decided it was OK.
"If it truly means our music is open and emotional, then that's
great," says Talley Summerlin, the group's lead singer.
"And if there's a way to be included in a movement that's
getting attention, that can't hurt us, either."
For more information:
What is Emo?
Emo Quiz - Sapa-AP