What happens then — once we go ahead and accept the suspect notion that the whole thing is in fact a genre and not a marketing convenience — is what always happens with genre: crosspollination. Note the use of the verb "to rock," and its total penetration into the lexicon: does "Dude, you rock!" mean that the addressee plays rock music? No; it attributes perceived qualities of a musical genre to someone's personality. What's more, one can categorize distinctly non-rock musics as "rock" if they meet certain criteria; Beethoven is more rock than Debussy, say, and Messian more punk than Beethoven. Which, and I know you've been waiting patiently and God bless you for it, brings us to the emo album of the year.
It's the new Shannon Wright. This is her fourth album; I guess she was in a band called Crowsdell before she went solo, but the only time I ever heard of Crowsdell was in Shannon Wright's press kits. I never heard her first solo effort; numbers two and three were, respectively "kinda good" and "pretty good," and that brings us to Album Four, which is called Over the Sun and is the Emo Album of the Year, only it doesn't sound much like the emo that's getting all the coverage in the glossies of late. What it sounds like instead: a little Tara Jane O'Neill; a little Quiet Parts of Slint; a slight touch more Loud Parts of Slint; and equal parts Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen only minus the desire to make you dance.