Emo is that school of punk rock in which major and minor chords find less favor than shredding diminisheds and minor sevenths played loud and distorted and generally real fast. Emo is that style of punk that sounds most like Slint if Slint had been a bunch of sixteen years old full of crosstops and beer, and hadn’t cared whether anybody thought they were intellectuals. Emo is the kind of punk rock that doesn’t mind if you think of it as the horn-rimmed kid down the block whose parents are spending a mint sending him to counseling. Emo is the kind of punk rock that gives skinny cultural studies majors something to stand-in-one-place pogo about. Emo is super-loud, strictly-screamed-seldom-sung, guitar-heavy, crashing-snare-dense, impressionistic-lyrics-rich, commerically not-hopeless-but-we’re-not-interested-in-your-blood-money punk rock. Lots of it is pretty awful. A very small percentage of it is great. I’ve got one for you.
