Pop Punk Predictions: The End Of An Era

The past half-decade has been quite the tumultuous one for alternative music. Pop punk, previously thought of as a throwaway genre for pre-adolescents has been given a new life in today’s alternative landscape. Unfortunately, it seems as if the genre’s time in the limelight might be drawing to a close, or at the very least shifting significantly. Between State Champs touring with 5 Seconds Of Summer and Neck Deep cracking the UK Top 10, 2015 was most definitely an amazing year for pop punk. However, the aforementioned bands have a far more carefree, upbeat sound than the artists which have dominated pop punk over the past few years. As 2016 dawns on us, I felt it necessary to open a dialogue on the future for these bands, and see if they can make a career for themselves after the tr00nami finally crests. Let’s start off with one of the higher profile bands in the scene…..

The Wonder Years

With the release of their latest album No Closer To Heaven, it seems as if The Wonder Years are finally ready to ditch the pizza, crewnecks and khakis of yesteryear and move into the fabled realm of “real music”. Just one glance at any of the songs on the album reveals Soupy has taken his penchant for songs about old white people in the 1940’s to the extreme. There’s nary a single major chord or d-beat to be found anywhere within the album. The Wonder Years now resemble the kind of run-of-the-mill alternative rock band that would play to twenty-something beardos and get a positive write-up in Brooklyn Vegan than your average pop punk outfit. It almost makes you forget these were the same guys who wrote a song about the Kool-Aid man beating up Cap’n Crunch at one point.

The Story So Far

It’s honestly hard to tell what The Story So Far will do in these dire times. They seem to have pushed their stangry, sadboi-baiting sound to the nth degree so there’s really nowhere else for them to go at this point. They could simply go back to their Under Soil & Dirt sound and ride the tr00 wave til it’s very death. If they followed their former pupils Neck Deep and joined the neo-mallpunk wave, that would presumably be the musical equivalent of throwing in the towel (not to mention it would basically alienate over 80% of their fan base). I believe TSSF should follow Trophy Eyes example and essentially become a hardcore band disguised as a pop punk outfit, that way they can retain their credibility amongst the 16-year old Tumblr users while also evolving their sound in the process. Basically the musical equivalent of having your cake and eating it too.

Man Overboard

Sadly, it seems as if Man Overboard’s time in the sunlight has come to a swift closure. Their last album was a confusing, boring mess that sounded way too much like Weezer-circa 1994 than any pop punk band nowadays. Man Overboard’s attempt to shake off the stigma of being a pop punk band in 2015 evidently backfired significantly, with Heavy Love charting far lower than their last album on Billboard. Once their contract with Rise Records expires, I could probably see them riding their career out for the next few years on some smaller label before the pressure of adulthood finally overwhelms their desire to play for crowds of 300 pizza-addicted teenagers night after night. For the band often credited with kickstarting the modern tr00 movement, it’s quite a shame to see Man Overboard’s career turn out this way. Expect to see various Defend Pop Punk shirts lining the discount racks of various thrift stores for the remainder of the decade.

Transit

Not only is the tr00 pop punk era drawing to a close, but it seems the fabled “emo revival” music-journalists have been creaming themselves over might be on its last legs as well. For Boston band Transit, this presents a problem. Despite various NFL-related airplay, the response to their last album was lukewarm at best. Given their propensity for walking the lines between both genres, the band have found themselves at a crossroads in their career. They could simply follow The Wonder Years example and go full Pitchfork-baiting indie rock. However, given the indie community’s general dislike for former pop punk/emo bands passing themselves off as credible artists, time will tell whether Transit can weather the fallout of the cresting wave of tr00ness.

Title Fight

Has their ever been a band with a worse case of multiple personality disorder than Title Fight? One minute they’re chumming it up with Backtrack and Rotting Out on America’s Hardcore, next minute they’re ripping Hum and trying to pass themselves off as a “shoegaze” outfit. Despite Hyperview sounding like something 4AD Records would’ve shat out in the early 90’s, things seem to be looking up for Title Fight. Along with former EZ-deniers Citizen and Will Yip butt buddies Turnover, Title Fight seem to be leading the charge for “former soft grunge bands trying to build a life after pop punk”. Give them credit, at least they know D-beats and songs about ex-girlfriends don’t exactly have a long shelf-life. Better to move with the times and risk getting left in the dust, week-old pizza slice in hand with a tattered flannel shirt adorning your back. Expect to see them at the Grammys accepting an award from Dave Grohl in the near-future.

Real Friends

I feel as if Real Friends will be the band most affected in the aftermath of the tr00nami. Most of these other bands had roots in less meaningful, less stangry forms of music (easycore for The Wonder Years, hardcore for Title Fight, etc.) However Real Friends are entirely a product of the 2010’s pop punk landscape, and I feel as if they will suffer the heaviest once the market falls through on the tr00 pop punk enterprise. Leaving aside the fact that their debut album was mediocre at best and didn’t hold a candle to their EP’s, there’s only so far you can go with sleepy eyes, bony knees and d-beats. Their Chicagoan contemporaries Knuckle Puck seem to do Real Friends better than Real Friends themselves can, while Aussie upstarts Trophy Eyes basically took Real Friends template of “pissed-off pop punk about ex-girlfriends” and pushed it to its limit. I honestly can’t see Real Friends with anywhere else to go. Once their fanbase grows up, it will definitely be hard for them to try and connect with the next generation of pop punk youth (which seems to be skewing in a far more lighthearted direction if Neck Deep’s latest album is anything to go by.) In their case, I believe Fall Out Boy said it best: “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago”…

Turnover – Peripheral Vision (2015)

Turnover – Peripheral Vision

Reinvention is the spice of life it seems, if by “reinvention” you mean “abandoning everything that made you unique.” For the Virginia Beach outfit Turnover that seems to be the case on their latest album, Peripheral Vision. Turnover’s previous recordings such as their 2011 self-titled EP and 2013’s Magnolia bore a strong pop punk influence and the band had much in common with their peers Citizen and Title Fight. For Peripheral Vision however, the band sought it best to ditch the spiky punk for a more subdued and inoffensive breed of light guitar pop.  Opening track “Cutting My Fingers Off” is a catchy little tune, with a swift surf rock beat and some melancholic sounding guitar that sets the mood nicely. “New Scream” strums along at a hurried pace, while fluffy guitar chords abound with glee. Lead singer Austin Getz’s voice is layered in so much syrupy reverb that you’d be forgiven for thinking your headphones are faulty. “Take My Head” seems like a breath of fresh air after the lazy strumming of the past few tracks, opening with some mild distortion, before sadly descending into the insipid twee balladry of the previous tracks.

The majority of the tracks on Peripheral Vision belong to the disposable, breathy school of indie pop which seems to have become a cliche in the past few years. Once you’ve heard one track, you’ve probably heard it done better by a multitude of fellow-minded artists. “Dizzy On The Comedown” sounds like a rejected DIIV B-side, while. Half the time Turnover can’t even decide what audience they’re trying to target. “Humming” has the kind of descending twinkly riff reminiscent of most of Topshelf Records current roster, whereas the drumming and vocals sound like such a pathetic attempt at aping Real Estate, you begin to wonder whether they simply conducted market research amongst a group of Tumblr users in order to determine which trendy bands to ride the coattails of.

Much like Title Fight’s Hyperview from earlier in the year, Peripheral Vision sounds like an attempt for Turnover to branch their audience out of the pop punk niche, and into a more indie-friendly territory. However, unlike Hyperview, Peripheral Vision sounds much less genuine in its approach and much more like a case of ‘follow-the-leader’. “Dizzy On The Comedown” sounds like Turnover listened to five minutes of a Beach Fossils album and thought it’d be in their best interests to simply cash in on that groups approach. Peripheral Vision is certainly a pleasant enough listen, but there’s simply not enough substance here to sustain repeated listens. It’s a great little Summer record and would make the perfect soundtrack for warm nights and lazy days alike. However if depth is what you’re looking for, you won’t find much of it here I’m afraid.

6/10

Retrospective: American Football – American Football (1999)

American Football – American Football

Hindsight is a funny thing. You can listen to a band years after their inception, think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and then find out that they were incredibly unsuccessful, made next to no money while they were together, and broke up soon after releasing their debut. That’s exactly what happened to Chicago-based group American Football, whose sole 1999 album has earnt the band the type of mystique and intrigue generally reserved for enigmatic acts such as Big Star or Rodriguez in terms of underappreciated artists. American Football were an emo group hailing from Urbana, Illinois in the late 90’s, who only ever released one album on then little-known Polyvinyl Records before quietly disbanding. Now you’d think this would be the end of their story right? Wrong. This one album would go on to become sort of a holy grail for emo in the 21st century, being cited by countless artists as a major influence, and re-assessing American Football’s cultural importance in the development of alterntive music. The bands fondness for gentle, twinkling guitars, Mike Kinsella’s soft spoken confessional lyrics would become something of a blueprint for indie rock and emo in the year’s after the albums initial release.

American Football first came into being in the middle of 1997, formed out of the dissolution of multiple bands. Vocalist Mike Kinsella had recorded previous tenures in influential 90’s emo outfits such as Cap’n Jazz and Joan Of Arc, and was currently a vocalist for a group named The One Up Downstairs. Internall issues caused The One Up Downstairs to call it a day, so Kinsella and drummer Steve Lamos went on to form American Football. The group signed with independent  Champaign, Illinois-based record label Polyvinyl (years before they would become the home of indie powerhouses like Of Montreal or Japandroids), and released a 3-track EP. Roughly a year later, the group unleashed their self-titled album onto the world at large.

In the time period in which American Football released this beautiful slice of midwestern emo meets twinkly math rock, emo had yet to become a four letter word, most bands swore by 3-chords and the truth and The Get Up Kids were the closest thing to a “mainstream” group that the genre could lay claim to. The album’s varying time signatures and soft, bittersweet vocals mixed with twinkly guitars and overly confessional lyrics were something of an oddity. The sound of American Football was in huge contrast to other bands in the genre. The band lacked the atmospheric intensity of Sunny Day Real Estate or Mineral; while their slow pace and gentle instrumentation set them apart from their more punk influenced peers such as The Promise Ring or Braid.

Midsummer melancholy is quite possibly the best way to describe American Football’s overall theme and style. Much like the lone house depicted in the cover art, the album evokes images of suburban angst and emptiness.Mike Kinsellas’ lyrics focus on the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood and the collapsing of relationships, delivered with the kind of stony-faced deadpan vigour that would make Ben Gibbard blush with embarrassment. But the lyrics aren’t what sets American Football from its fellow graduates in the emo class of ’99. The main draw with American Football is the airtight instrumentation of Kinsella and co., and the downright brilliance of what these guys are able to accomplish within 40 minutes. Forget 10 minute guitar solos, all American Football need are some switching up time signatures and floating guitar instrumentation and you’re good to go.

Opening track “Never Meant” is the pristine centrepiece of the album. That’s not to say that the rest of the album doesn’t exactly hold a candle, but it does pale in comparison to the masterpiece of  “Never Meant”. “The Summer Ends” slows down the pace by a notch or two, while Kinsella’s soft croon intertwines with the blunt trumpeting of Steve Lamos, creating a breezy and relaxed mood that transitions well from the angst of the previous track. “Honestly” begins as a simple track, with Kinsella’s ringing guitar scales going up and down the place, until the time signature changes at 1:50 and hits like a freight train. The track then continues on in this vain while distorted guitar chords and Vamos’s horn section swirls around in a dreamlike state.

“Stay Home” clocks at just over 8 minutes, and yet it feels far shorter than its runtime suggests. Mike Kinsella’s distant and introverted lyrics on the track sound like teenage mantras for the unloved. “Don’t leave home again/If empathy takes energy/’cause everyone feels just like you” could easily have been ripped from the page of any brokenhearted 16 year old, but in the context of American Football, it sounds like the most meaningful statement on earth. Due to the track’s long and repetitive structure, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Eat World’s “Goodbye Sky Harbor” from Clarity, which was released a mere 7 months prior to American Football. In many ways, you could consider American Football the yin to Clarity’s yang, since while Jimmy Eat World sung about teenage heartache and hometown problems with the heart-on-the-sleeve angst and fiery determination of adolescent males, American Football focuses on the breakup and dissolving of meaningful relationships with an emotionally distant sense of regret, and a sense of maturity hitherto unseen in emo music. Before you know it, “The One With The Wurlitzer” hits and gives the album a serene send-off. Despite the title sounding like a rejected Friends episode, it’s easily the most laid-back and calmest sounding song on the album.

American Football’s impact on the world of alternative music was not an instantaneous one. The band broke up months after the release of the album, presumably to be written off as another footnote in music history. As the years progressed into the 2000’s, emo came to be associated with signifiers such as Hot Topic and teenagers with dyed hair and too much eyeliner. The emo period in the mid-2000’s was comparable to the Sunset Strip’s bastardisation of heavy metal in the 80’s, in terms of how far removed from its origins it had become. It’s quite a chilling thought to realise that somehow it’s possible to formulate a connection between American Football and Blood On The Dance Floor, but nevertheless, the genre prevailed. Then a funny thing happened at the end of the decade. Bands begun reaching back into the 1990’s and taking inspiration from the emo forebearers of the decade. And wouldn’t you know it, American Football happened to be one of the frontrunner in terms of bands getting long-overdue acknowledgement.

The impact American Football’s lone studio album had on the development of emo a decade after its inception could be comparable to The Velvet Underground’s influence on punk rock and alternative music in the late 70’s. Multiple high profile bands in the so called “Emo Revival”, from Dads to Foxing to The Hotelier to Tigers Jaw to even The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die have acknowledge the mopey midwesterners as an influence. Polyvinyl Records would go on to become an indie powerhouse in the 21st century, adding high-profile acts such as Of Montreal, Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, The Rentals, STRFKR and Alvvays to their roster. Mike Kinsella would briefly reunite with his brother Tim and fellow ex-Cap’n Jazz members in the experimental outfit Owls, before embarking on a solo career under the moniker Owen. In March of 2014, Polyvinyl reissued American Football with a bonus disc containing live performances of several of the songs. A month later, Polyvinyl registered the domain name “americanfootballmusic.com”, which contained a countdown lasting until the 21st of April. Once the countdown ended, it was announced that American Football would reunite and tour the United States in honor of the album’s 15th anniversary.

While American Football still remains a highly enjoyable album, quite possibly one of the best albums of 1999 in my opinion (yes, it’s up there with Ágætis byrjun and Emergency & I in terms of alternative albums from that year), it’s funny to think about how the different emo would have turned out had the band never released this. Would emo have still gone mainstream and end up becoming one of the most polarising genres of the 2000’s? What would all those revival bands be channeling as opposed to American Football? Would we have had a bunch of Get Up Kids and Saves The Day revival bands instead? Would twinkly guitars have ever become a thing outside of cheesy 80’s soft rock ballads? Or am I simply overthinking what is a relatively enjoyable and uplifting emo album that remains a stone-cold classic of the genre to this very day and will presumably remain so? Whatever the case, if you haven’t heard this album yet in all its glory, go out and hear it right now. You will absolutely not regret it. Trust me.

9/10