Tag: emo

Somehow I am just now realizing that “emo and hardcore music” are less innovative versions of prog-rock.

Let us think about it: there are often electronic touches and dudes are a bit more sad than the happier harmonies found in the Yes canon.  Akin to hippie-jam-bands, there are sprawling guitar solos.  Drum solos.  Bass solos.  Synth solos.  Solos.  Noodling.  Head bopping.  Jamming.  I say “less innovative” because somehow I just can’t imagine Greg Lake shouting in lieu of his sweet singing.

(Music history note:  Let us be clear that Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Genesis, Yes and a few others, created prog-rock to the wet dreams of misunderstood men everywhere.  Our modern music would sound quite different had these cats not existed.)

For those into “hardcore” and “emo” (labels! labels!) of the last ten or so years, I would suggest “Things I Grew Up With” by Those Galloping Hordes.

The opening track, “Mr. Jacob Geehr” is an expressive dreamy soundscape of delightful randomness: chimes, and xylophones and synth lines jamming away.  “A Melancholy Association With A Tragedy” (hark! do I hear a flute?!) incorporates a small, but poignant vocal into a mostly instrumental track.  The vocals are sparse on the album; it’s all mostly instrumental.  When there is a vocal, it’s either a pleasant to the soundscape or somewhat cacophonous to match the soundscape.  There are dashes of “typical hardcore band-type screaming vocals” but if that is not for you, there is enough elsewhere on the album that will be for you.