In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.
October is a wrap, and we’re saying goodbye to spooky season with 10 songs from the punk world released in the past month that are not to miss. But first, some punky features we ran in October:
* Alexisonfire: the breakup, hiatus, & return of one of Canada’s greatest post-hardcore bands
* A look back on the early 2000s Ontario post-hardcore scene, with Alexisonfire
* Keith Buckley talks life after Every Time I Die and new band Many Eyes
* Taking Back Sunday discuss 10 influences on new LP 152
* Paint It Black‘s Dan Yemin on longevity in hardcore, bridging generation gaps, protest music & more (podcast)
* Open City (members of Paint It Black) break down every track on Hands in the Honey Jar
* Citizen talk new album, influences, Rob Schnapf, Youth turning 10, & more (podcast)
* Emo veterans Lync give a track-by-track breakdown of their classic 1994 LP These Are Not Fall Colors
* Free Throw break down every track on Lessons That We Swear To Keep
* 7 albums & books that influenced Harm’s Way‘s new LP Common Suffering
* Horrendous discuss 5 punk albums that shaped their music
* October album reviews: blink-182, awakebutstillinbed, Teenage Halloween, The Menzingers, Citizen, The Gaslight Anthem, Dreamwell, Open City, Mil-Spec, Knuckle Puck, Year of the Knife, END, Capra, Svalbard, Free Throw, Private Mind, Dollar Signs, A Mourning Star, PWRUP, The Callous Daoboys, Strange Joy, and the Snag/Coma Regalia split.
We’ve also got some new exclusive punk vinyl in the shop, including our Alexisonfire box set, reissues & magazine, the new Taking Back Sunday album & Louder Now reissue, Balance and Composure’s Boundaries EP (splatter), End It’s EPs on one 12″ (glow in the dark), The Acacia Strain’s Slow Decay (ghostly bone & black), Counterparts’ The Difference Between Hell and Home (spring green), Mae’s Destination: Beautiful (dark blue opaque in clear), Dr. Acula’s S/T (swirl), and more.
Read on for my picks of the best songs of October that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order…
Ben Quad – “Would You Tell Picasso To Sell His Guitars?”
Ben Quad are the newest and least established band on the upcoming Hot Mulligan / Heart Attack Man / Spanish Love Songs tour, which is one of this fall’s most unmissable package tours for the newer generation of emo/pop punk, and I have a feeling they’ll have made a lot of new fans by the end of it, especially with great new singles like “Would You Tell Picasso To Sell His Guitars?.” In classic fashion, it pairs a funny song title (lifted from a School of Rock joke) with personal, emotional subject matter. When they ask “What’s the point of living honestly?” in a strained upper register, they sound like they’re genuinely searching for something. That mix of sincerity, hooks, and adrenaline is always a winning formula when it’s done well, and Ben Quad do it very, very well.
blink-182 – “Bad News”
The new blink-182 album One More Time… is full of endearing moments (and some cringier ones), but if there’s one song that I’d easily put up against their classic material, it’s “Bad News.” blink albums always have these great late-album, Mark-sung deep cuts (“Wendy Clear,” “Every Time I Look For You,” “Here’s Your Letter”), and One More Time‘s is “Bad News.” Opening with just Mark’s voice and a acoustic guitar, it finds Mark in rare stripped-down form, but the intro turns out to be a red herring. After 14 seconds, it becomes an onslaught of Travis Barker drum rolls, and it turns into one of the fastest, hardest songs on the album, with Mark yell-singing over a blast of double-time pop punk that almost never lets up–even the more somber bridge finds Travis going a mile a minute. Every melody is an earworm, its stylistic direction could’ve come at almost any era of blink, and it’s a grown-ass breakup song that I don’t think blink would’ve had the perspective to write 25 years ago. It’s a rare case of blink acting their ages and leaving a big impact in the process.
Many Eyes – “Revelation”
I doubt I’m alone in saying that I’m still reeling from the breakup of Every Time I Die, but at least we’re finally getting new music from almost all of the members. With his ex-bandmates playing in Better Lovers, vocalist Keith Buckley launched his own new band, Many Eyes, and their first single is “Revelation.” It’s a great debut single, because it represents a new beginning for Keith in every way–thematically, sonically, and symbolically. It came about after he met his new bandmates Charlie and Nick Bellmore and connected with them over a shared love of grunge and hardcore, and it was inspired by his recent path to sobriety. “I kind of anthropomorphized the vice of alcoholism,” Keith says, “and because I was reading the Bible a lot, I used a metaphor of just seeing it as the devil itself.” He has the same fire in his voice that he had on ETID’s angriest songs, and he contrasts the screamed verses with one of the most soaringly clean choruses of his career. “If anything makes you feel connected to the universe,” Keith says, “it’s a chorus.”
glass beach – “the CIA”
I don’t know if I really consider “the CIA” an emo song, but that’s the “scene” that glass beach mostly live in (for now at least), and “the CIA” is one of the best songs I heard in October in any genre of music, so I decided to stop overthinking and just include it. Really it’s a zany, shapeshifting art pop song that reminds me of aughts-era stuff like The Fiery Furnaces and The Most Serene Republic, and it ends with sludge metal riffs and breakbeats. It’s a wild ride that doesn’t really sound like much else coming out right now, and I’d implore anyone that likes any kind of off-center rock music to listen to it.
Barely Civil – “Coasting Mostly”
Milwaukee emo band Barely Civil have a new album on the way (details TBA), and the song they just released from it sounds like they’re really going for it. It was produced by Chris Teti of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, who’s been doing a lot of great production work lately (Fiddlehead, Anxious, etc), and whose own band feels like a reference point for Barely Civil. Not that “Coasting Mostly” really sounds much like TWIABP, but it’s a BIG sounding emo song, so it makes sense that they’d wanna work with a guy who knows how to do it big.
Saturdays At Your Place – “Pourover”
Ask Saturdays At Your Place what their favorite side of the Marietta/Modern Baseball split is and they’d probably answer “yes.” Their latest single “Pourover” has the Midwest-style charge of the former and the youthful quirks of the latter, and SAYP turn it into something that’s all their own. This song’s also gonna be on a split–with Summerbruise and Shoplifter and due November 17 via No Sleep–and maybe one day we’ll be talking about that one as a scene/generation-capturing moment too.
SAYP are also currently on the road opening the first leg of the Free Throw / Prince Daddy & the Hyena / Charmer tour. If you’re going, don’t miss ’em.
Joystick – “Boxes”
Ska-punk is so addictive when it’s done right because it’s some of the fastest, danciest, catchiest music that exists under the punk umbrella, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing a band just lean into good old fashioned ska-punk without any of the goofy elements that gave the genre a bad name. Joystick are a band who do that on every record, and “Boxes” off their upcoming Dwell EP is no exception.
Modern Color – “Fortress”
Modern Color (who share drummer Vince Nguyen with Militarie Gun) recently began their tour with Citizen and Narrow Head, and they’ve got a new banger out for the occasion. “Fortress” falls somewhere between riffy post-hardcore and shoegazy indie rock in a way that would fit with anything from Quicksand to Superheaven to the two bands Modern Color are currently on tour with, and they toe this familiar line in a way that never sounds like rehashed idol worship. The vibes are on point from the start, but it’s that big shoutalong chorus that seals the deal.
Glitterer – “Plastic”
As much as we all want Title Fight to come back, it shouldn’t go overlooked that Ned Russin is still making great music right now with Glitterer. His upcoming LP Rationale is Glitterer’s first as a full band (with DC/Baltimore musicians Nicole Dao, Jonas Farah, and Connor Morin), and you can definitely hear that it’s a band on the hard-hitting lead single “Plastic.” It’s fueled by a big, grunge-sized riff, and Ned tops it off with the same unmistakable yell-singing and stretched-out vowels that he brought to some of Title Fight’s best songs.
The Early November – “About Me”
The Early November were torch-carriers for Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World pretty much off the bat, and they’ve done a lot of different stuff since then, but this celestial new song feels like an older, wiser variation on that same thing, and it’s one of the strongest tracks in this style that I’ve heard in recent memory.
—
In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more:
For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2023.
—
Browse our selection of hand-picked punk vinyl.
Read past and future editions of ‘In Defense of the Genre’ here.
