Slowcore is bigger than ever (thanks TikTok), and all the increased attention on the ’90s-centric genre has got me thinking about something that I think could use a little more love: slowcore’s presence within emo. It might sound like a redundant thing; many of the most iconic slowcore bands (Low, Codeine, Duster, Carissa’s Wierd, etc) sound pretty fuckin’ emo in the first place–not to mention “slowcore” is often used interchangeably with “sadcore,” and try explaining the difference between “emo” and “sadcore” to anyone who isn’t a massive subgenre freak (not to also mention “sadcore” has been used to describe anything from Lana Del Rey to Nick Cave to SOPHIE so what are genres anyway)–but, inherent musical similarities aside, there’s something distinct about the sound of slowcore infiltrating the emo world. So, to dive more into this appealing crossover, I’ve put together a list of 10 great slowcore songs by bands that are widely considered emo. Your genre definitions may vary, but however you classify this stuff, this is just a list of 10 songs that feel ripe for rediscovery (or plain old discovery) right now.
Read on for the list, in chronological order…
Karate – “This, Plus Slow Song” (1997)
The recently-reunited Karate incorporate too many different styles of music to ever fit into one box in particular, and emo and slowcore are definitely two of them. They begin their classic 1997 album In Place of Real Insight with a song that’s almost too perfectly titled for this list, “This, Plus Slow Song,” and it’s one of the earliest and best examples of a song that blurs the line between emo and slowcore. It’s clean, somber, and glacial-paced, and Geoff Farina’s vocal performance is full of the impassioned yearning that makes it unmistakably emo. If you aren’t already on a Karate kick (no pun intended), it’s a good time to change that, as their first album in 20 years is almost here.
Mineral – “Love Letter Typewriter/Palisade” (1998)
Mineral’s debut album The Power of Failing is about as definitively emo as it gets, but for their second, final, and best album EndSerenading, they branched out from scrappy, yelpy emo anthems and took influence from the cleaner, slower sounds of Codeine and other similar bands. Never is that more effective than on album opener “Love Letter Typewriter/Palisade,” which is technically two tracks but really it’s one long eight-minute song and almost always played live that way. “Love Letter Typewriter” has nothing but Chris Simpson singing over some gorgeous, bare-bones guitar, and when he wails “Will you ever know how much I love you?”, it’s one of the most iconic emo catharsis moments of all time. The band comes crashing in with “Palisade,” the slow pace stays the same, and Chris’ delivery is just as tear-jerking.
Jimmy Eat World – “Table For Glasses” (1999)
Jimmy Eat World’s best-known songs are all bangers, but they’ve always been just as impactful when they slow it down. They opened their massively influential 1999 album Clarity with an admitted homage to Low, and Jim Adkins’ soaring, boyish voice gave it an intrinsically emo twist. Drummer Zach Lind holds down a slow, sturdy beat without doing any of the fancier stuff that he’s capable of, and the band gradually builds the song up with interlocking, twinkly guitarpeggios, cello, and bells/chimes that come together to create one of the most painfully beautiful moments in the band’s catalog. It’s a perfect slowcore emo song, and–even with the other great slower Jimmy songs that exists–there’s kind of nothing else like this one.
American Football – “For Sure” (1999)
By the time Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos formed American Football, they’d already done the punk/emo thing a handful of times (including Mike drumming in Cap’n Jazz during his teenage years), and they wanted to change it up. They looked to slowcore bands like Codeine and Red House Painters, as well as post-rock bands like Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, and the new set of influences was reflected in the music they wrote for their now-legendary debut album. From the slow pace to the sad trumpets to Mike’s hushed singing, the slowcore influence comes across loudly (well, quietly) and clearly on “For Sure.” It’s a beautiful, hypnotic song, and there’s a good argument to be made that it belongs more in the slowcore conversation than the emo one, despite this album’s massive impact within the latter. (Also of note: Ethel Cain covered this one for the band’s new LP1 covers album, and her own music has done a lot to help repopularize slowcore too.)
Death Cab For Cutie – “No Joy In Mudville” (2000)
The influence of slowcore bands like Codeine and Bedhead is all over Death Cab’s sophomore album We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and if you really wanna hear them trudge by at a snail’s pace, look no further than the album’s penultimate track “No Joy In Mudville.” It’s a six-minute ebb-and-flow through minimal guitar, bass, drum, and glockenspiel patterns, all topped off with witty, vivid poetry from Ben Gibbard that stood out from slowcore’s typical less-is-more approach to lyricism. Especially once Death Cab’s more upbeat songs helped skyrocket the band into fame, this side of them has always felt like a treat to come back to.
Pedro the Lion – “Options” (2002)
Pedro the Lion bridge the gap between slowcore and emo on a lot of their songs, and one of their most examples of that is “Options,” the first song on their classic 2002 concept album Control. The album follows a tragically ill-fated marriage, and as David Bazan sings “I could never divorce you without a good reason… But for now, I need you” over the song’s spindly guitar and dream-state drumming, it’s about as emo-slowcore as it gets.
For more emo-slowcore fun, check out Foxing & Modern Baseball’s acoustic cover of this song from 2014.
Joie De Vivre – “Sundays” (2010)
The “emo revival” of the late 2000s and early 2010s gets stereotyped as being a bunch of bands that sound like Cap’n Jazz, but that’s not the full story. There were also a few bands that sounded like Mineral! One of the best was Joie De Vivre, whose 2010 fan-fave “Sundays” is just as classic at this point as “Love Letter Typewriter” was when that song came out. “Sundays” uses a little more distorted guitar than most of the very-clean-sounding songs on this list do, but it scratches the slowcore-emo itch all the same, and Brandon Lutmer’s yearning vocals soar through the emo-catharsis threshold.
Football, Etc. – “Safety” (2011)
Football, etc. are a great example of the age-old emo doctrine that nothing goes with tear-jerking emotion like sports references. They’ve been described on multiple occasions as “Mineral meets Rainer Maria”–and both are admitted influences–and they perfectly capture the slowcore vibes of the former on “Safety,” a highlight of their 2011 debut album The Draft. The slow-moving backdrop and Lindsay Minton’s soaring voice are both magnetic, and the song is timeless. They may have been looking to the ’90s for influence, but it still sounds like something that could’ve come out yesterday.
Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) – “I Was Somewhere Cold, Dark… and Lonely” (2014)
The influence of Mineral, American Football, and other slowcore-emo was apparent on emo revival OGs Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) from the start, but–like Mineral–they got even slower and sadder on their second and final album. When a song called “I Was Somewhere Cold, Dark… and Lonely” opens with the lyric “I almost died at 21,” you know you’re in for heartbreak, and that’s exactly what this slow, clean emo song has in store. Bandleader Keith Latinen spends the rest of the song describing the aforementioned near-death experience in goosebump-inducing detail, and the slowcore-ish backdrop is just as chilling as the subject matter.
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – “Mr. Settled Score” (2024)
History repeats itself. Count Your Lucky Stars (which is run by Keith from Empire! Empire!) released the last three songs on this list, and in 2024, it continues to be a home for slowcore-infused emo. The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick looked to the emo revivalists the same way those bands looked to the ’90s, and they also looked to slowcore-adajcent things like The Microphones and Carissa’s Wierd offshoot Grand Archives. This year’s six-and-a-half minute “Mr. Settled Score” mixes clean arpeggiated guitars and sweeping string arrangements in a way that shares some DNA with the Jimmy Eat World song on this list, but the low-pitched vocals are closer to something like Duster. The ingredients are familiar, and Goalie’s Anxiety are clearly finding new things to say about them.
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Also, catch Karate and American Football at Las Vegas’ new second/fourth-wave-themed emo festival Best Friends Forever this weekend (alongside Cap’n Jazz, Sunny Day Real Estate, Algernon Cadwallader, The Dismemberment Plan, The Blood Brothers, Unwound, Built To Spill, Pinback, and more), which is one weekend before you can catch Jimmy Eat World playing Bleed American in full at Las Vegas’ third-wave-themed emo festival When We Were Young (alongside My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional, Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Starting Line, Saves The Day, Thursday, and more).
For more lists like this, see 30 essential songs from the shoegaze / heavy crossover.