Rolling Stone’s top 40 emo albums (25-21)

25: Cursive - Domestica (2000, Saddle Creek)

I always thought this was a lot more twee and poppy than it is. Maybe Cursive gets softer as they go, but this has just as much lurching post-hardcore as anything on the list. It also has music box melodies, melodrama, and a minor penchant for electronic weirdness, which makes me wonder if bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco used this as a blueprint to build their own poppier, more accessible heartbreak anthems. I hear everything from the Smiths and the Beatles to Fugazi and Quicksand in Domestica. This album is all over the place, sometimes in a way that doesn’t endear me to it. The payoffs on tracks like “Shallow Means, Deep Ends” and “The Radiator Hums” are worth hearing, though.

24: Embrace - Embrace (1987, Dischord)

Here’s where I lose all my punk points and admit today is the first time I’ve heard this record in full. I tried a couple tracks when I was younger, hated them, and haven’t revisited in earnest for over a decade. I enjoyed this listen, and will certainly check back in, but like the other Revolution Summer DC emo-core, I don’t see it scratching the itch I need 80s hardcore to scratch. Ian MacKaye’s voice on this record will never hit me the same as when he screams “what happened to you?” on “Filler” by “Minor Threat. And if I want plaintive, plodding, off putting 80’s punk, I can listen to Joy Division or Wire do a better recorded and more compelling take on it. This entire scene is stuck between two worlds without giving me what I want from either. Still, the confluence of influence makes Embrace an important historical document in pinpointing how emo evolved from hardcore. I hope it grows on me.

23: Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends (2002, Victory)

I think we have this instalments’ contender for “horniest album” locked up. Much like The Used, I probably could have connected with this record at some point if I hadn’t just dismissed it as “dork poser bullshit” since basically the day it came out. To my ear, this is just as influential on the fourth wave basement twinkle music I cut my teeth on as the stuff everyone was meat riding at the time, like American Football. You can’t tell me all my too cool twinkledaddy friends weren’t listening to this in middle school — the melodies are just too engrained in what came after. There are also some “emo nite hall of fame” level tracks on this one. Still, I’m a 32 year-old man. I just can’t emotionally connect to a pop punk album from 20 years ago the way some people would probably like me to.

22: Say Anything - …Is a Real Boy (2004, Doghouse)

Actually fuck it, this has to be the horniest album on the list. It might be the horniest album of all time. Buddy literally describes himself turning into a spider and “crawling inside her”. I thought at first this was way too self-serious, but then I started reading about the band and it turns out Max Bemis, the main guy who wrote and recorded most of this album, once got arrested for pouring soup on the ground, one spoonful at a time, over a 30 minute period. The highly ironic nature of these songs revealed themselves to me after reading that little tidbit. This record’s musical arrangements are quite complex, especially compared to the stuff Say Anything cites as influential, like Lifetime and Saves the Day. I’m reminded as much of something like Ben Folds as the melodic post-hardcore this gets lumped in with. It’s an animated, emotional and thoughtful take on the pop-friendly sad boy rock that was dominating underground music at the time.

21: The Get Up Kids - Four Minute Mile (1997, Doghouse)

Here’s another case of Rolling Stone picking the wrong album by the right band. I think the Get Up Kids’ next record, Something to Write Home About, is undeniably the one with the hits. I guess Four Minute Mile has a cooler story — it was recorded in a weekend because the band’s drummer couldn’t get any time off from high school. This might be the greatest album tracked by high school students in two days, but some trappings remain. The recording isn’t necessarily easy on the ears. I do appreciate the old school hardcore approach of one-taking everything and not caring too much about fuck-ups, but some of the guitar tones sound irritating and distracting. I also think the band needed more time and experience bringing the song concepts to life, which they did on their next record. This is okay, but I would have put it lower on the list.