photo: Into It. Over It., via zacottoson's Instagram
Erudite, gregarious, well-connected, and extremely savvy, Evan Weiss of Into It. Over It. (and numerous other bands) has become something of a spokesperson for… this thing. And in less than 140 characters, he’s defined its three stages:
My favorite part of doing an interview for @lastcallcd?? They didn't mention or ask about emo ONCE. Some actual awesome interview questions
— Into It. Over It. (@intoitoverit) January 23, 2014First, there’s the thrill of finally getting some national attention. A few weeks after his January performance on “Last Call With Carson Daly”, Into It. Over It., The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die and A Great Big Pile of Leaves have just finished playing a sold-out gig at the Echo in Los Angeles. As they’re all trying to figure out where to grab a post-show bite, Weiss tells me, “If people are excited about these bands, that fucking rules. I don’t care who’s talking about it.”
The second stage is bemusement; although it's funny to imagine Carson Daly grilling Weiss about the prophetic influence of Algernon Cadwallader, Into It. Over It. is on national TV because of Intersections, a lush, affecting record serving as a culmination of a decade spent relentlessly touring and writing—not because of a couple of think pieces. And then there’s Stage Three: The slight defensiveness, the “it’s not a revival, you just stopped paying attention.”
And Weiss and most others will readily admit: Yes, “you” stopped paying attention—but it was warranted and probably necessary. The typical “emo revival” narrative is that, post-Bleed American, Fueled By Ramen and its progeny warped (pun intended) this scene into something not only unrecognizable from its punk roots, but completely outside the scope of “adult” listening. There’s truth to that, but during those years, as Weiss puts it, “Everything went back into the basement.” Derrick Shanholtzer, one of TWIABP’s three guitarists, puts it more bluntly: “We were the few people doing this in 2008. Really bad, wussy emo rock 10 years after it was relevant.”
Weiss, Shanholtzer, TWIABP guitarist/singer/general spokesperson Greg Horbal and Chris Zizzamia (who adds spoken word to their freewheeling, chaotic live set) met during those basement days, before they were in their current bands. Horbal, based in Willimantic, CT and still operating as a booking agent outside of TWIABP, explains “When you start getting into punk rock, the thing you hear is that anyone can do anything. You start messaging bands on Myspace and book a legion hall for $100 and that’s how you start meeting people.”
Shanholtzer’s story is similar: “I picked up a cassette from this band Law Biting Citizens and I started emailing them really annoyingly. I lived in a two-stoplight town in West Virginia and their 30-year old guitarist explained to me how to book a show. Fourteen-year old me used paper route money to rent a PA, book a bunch of local bands. It was terrible, but I never stopped doing it.” Weiss contacted him on AIM back in 2004 to book his previous band the Progress at a skating rink in New Martinsville, WV. The other two met when the Horbal was booking an all-acoustic folk punk show and according to Zizzamia, “I really didn’t want to do it.” (They all seem to agree that folk-punk is the “disease of music.”)
Of course, for many years, a lot of people considered “emo” to be a similarly pathogenic genre; but this is just one multi-headliner 2014 tour that proves how just about all emotive, melodic, guitar-based music released on independent labels is being lumped into “emo” these days. You had cathartic, metallic alt-rock crossing the Mason-Dixon line with Doylestown, Penn.’s Balance & Composure and Atlantans Manchester Orchestra; You Blew It!’s taut and angsty pop-punk matched up with wildly popular, superlyrical acoustic duo Front Bottoms. Dead serious Los Angeles post-hardcore band Touché Amoré aligns with Philly spiritualists MewithoutYou and shit-talking noiseniks Drug Church. But the IIOI/TWIABP/AGBPOL show is the best demonstration of how elastic that genre tag can be. A Great Big Pile of Leaves play snappy, low-key pop-rock similar to Wheat or Change-era Dismemberment Plan. The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die channels midwestern emo through post-rock and cathartic, orchestral indie; in 2005, they’d be a peer of Wolf Parade or Arcade Fire. And Into It. Over It. is simply off-kilter, lyrical, melodic rock music that alludes to both Jawbreaker and Death Cab for Cutie.
So basically, it’s an indie rock show and like most of its ilk, its attendees end up at the Brite Spot, a charmingly dumpy diner in Echo Park recently namechecked in Ariel Pink’s “Live it Up.” But here’s the major difference: The show’s over and it’s only 10 PM. Doors were at 5 PM and four bands played (including local act French Exit). The bands actually prefer all-ages shows even if the venues don’t (for obvious financial reasons). “There are a couple [on this tour] that are 14+ and one in Gainesville, Florida that’s 18+, but that was the only option,” Weiss says. Despite how it might perpetuate the stereotype of them not making “adult” music, “it’s not even a question in our mind,” according to Horbal. Stanholtzer cuts to the chase: “You don’t start an emo band in the late 2000s without playing all ages shows, you’re gonna lose a lot of money. You weren’t making any to begin with.”
These kind of concerns are part of what Weiss alluded to in that tweet—that the term “emo” is bad for business. Or at least that it can limit the prospective audience. This is nothing new: As Shanholtzer says, “One of the most overlooked things is this was originally tagged as ‘post-emo indie rock.’ When the Get Up Kids and Promise Ring got popular, people were talking about emo in indie media circuits, so [those bands] were saying ‘We should call ourselves indie rock, because I don’t want to hear that word again, I don’t want another news piece, I don’t want to be a roundtable discussion.’”
The differences between "indie rock" bands and "emo" bands are often negligible. But both scenes are built on relationships, and each tribe has its own labels, publicists and publications. Shanholtzer points out how arbitrarily the lines are drawn, bringing up Portland-based Hardly Art band Hausu (“They sound like if Tim Kasher was fronting Sonic Youth”.) Though they fit right within what TWIABP do, “they’re in a completely different world, the label and the shows they play align them with someone else. It makes it look like it’s unrelatable to our fanbase or theirs.” Horbal agrees: “[Andrew Savage] from Parquet Courts used to be in Teenage Cool Kids, and we would definitely have played with them at some point. There is no way we’ll ever be put on the same show with Parquet Courts.”
Considering that Hausu and Parquet Courts aren’t exactly at the level of, say, Fall Out Boy, you have to wonder where the line of communication is broken: These are resourceful, proactive bands. Have they pursued these options? Do they even want to? Maybe not. Even if the show at the Echo seemed to have a healthy industry presence, they’re almost all from punk labels that have little relation to the indie rock mainstream and Weiss says, “they’d have no idea what to do with [The World Is…].” Still, these guys realize that the punk rock industry can’t be every bit as superficial. TWIABP recall being offered a record deal from an upper-tier punk imprint and, after they failed to sign the contract within a day, Horbal recalls, “They were just like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just recede my offer.’”
"If you’re doing something well enough on your own to be self-sufficient," Weiss says, "people are weirded out by that.”
“A big part of what we do, the modern DIY bands, is have a close and clear connection with our fanbase,” Horbal says. It’s not a scene, it’s not an arms race... it’s more like a fully functioning, autonomous nation. “The local bands we book are friends, people we know and have been around as long as we have,” according to Weiss. “When we’re in Texas, it’s Football, Etc. and Pswingset, when we’re Florida, it’s You Blew It! and Dikembe, and when we go to Philly, it’s Glocca Morra and Hurry, when we’re in Connecticut, it’s Ovlov.”
So if there is a fear of some kind of outside insurrection—whether from labels, bands or media outlets—Weiss is confident they'll keep doing what they’re doing, #emorevival narrative or not. “There’s this giant misconception that people think that this is exclusive, that this isn’t something for everybody,” he says. “Which is total bullshit. It’s the polar opposite of why we started.”