Labels: Adagio830 – Eat A Book – Lilla Himmel – sncl – time as a color
Review by: james pacanowski
Emo as the 90s defined it is still a thing being done in the year 2013. Who’d have thought? Granted nowadays there seems to be an appetite to resurrect all things related to that (relatively) carefree era, it’s still somewhat astounding how stubborn the damned genre is “” regardless of how unfashionable it becomes (and boy is this sort of stuff unfashionable, as I’m sure every label involved in this release will attest to), there are still people who insist on putting out records like this one. And though the number of releases has slowed to a trickle, there’s been a trade-off in quality over quantity. Which leads us to this split.
Wits End hail from Norway and they play something that sits between Ampere and Mainspring. It’s not comparable to modernmo like Reds which tried to drag emo kicking and screaming into the 21st century; it definitely still keeps one foot firmly in the 90s emo camp, but it’s all the better for it. The track here, Seeing Through, I guess could be classified as a slow builder in that it starts off controlled and finishes loud and frantic, but it goes all over the place in between. There’s a bit in the bridge where the guitars cut out and you just have the vocals over the rhythm, which is officially the coolest thing an emo band can do. Good track.
Human Hands meanwhile just kill it. I’ve been really looking forward to hearing their song here “” Matchsticks – on wax for a while as it consistently inspires the most severe of emo leans live. I’ve seen audiences defy Newton to this song, rocking gently until they’re at 45° angles to the floor. When that first shimmery guitar strum kicks in, people go to jelly. If a band doing all the good bits of I Hate Myself and Indian Summer appeals to you then you should really be listening to this band already.