Whats all this about

This will be the Music section of my Zine, and it will focus on my great passion, midwest emo and pop punk. I will try and explain the origins and trivia of some bands/authors, and showcase some of their works. Some forewords are, alas, necessary: one, I am NOT A PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN, therefore all the opinions I will share are completely subjective. I can't offer an objective view on the matter, simply because I lack the necessary expertise. Two, I am in no way affiliated with any of these bands (I WISH), so everything I say will be a result of unfettered opinions. Of course if you like any of these tracks the best course of action would be supporting the authors, in any way you deem adequate. Three, I would LOVE TO HEAR YOUR OPINION, I will try in the future to setup a "comment" section, but for now feel free to reach me in the contacts provided at the bottom of the page and I would GLADLY aknowledge your insight and even give you a shoutout/response in the next post!

Tigers Jaw, and the uselessness of labels

Its fucked up that the first ever band presented in a blog about Midwest Emo is not even from the Midwest. Arguably, they arent even the right genre. But let's take it one step at a time. Tigers Jaw was founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 2005. You may know the place because its the city were the sitcom "The Office" takes place; but if you follow the genre, you know the place is the Nazareth of 4th wave emo: bands of the caliber of The Mezingers, or Captain, we're Sinking emerged right at the same time as Tigers Jaw, and the Scranton scene birthed many more bands like The Wonder years, Title Flight and Algernon Cadwallader (all household names of midwest emo), albeit in later years. Must be something in the water, I think, and I am grateful for that.

The reality is that, in a period (early 2000s), where we were passing from MySpace to Twitter, a lot of the social dynamics of the 90s were still present, and being coadiuvated (and not hindered) by the early internet. Little kids were copying their older brothers/ schoolmates: this meant that if you knew a senior that was in a band, you were going to be inspired by his sounds and produce something similar; but then your sounds were going out in the net, with the hope of you know, one day performing in Philly, that is like 1 hour away by car. That was your hope, a concrete goal to aspire to and really work torward.

Thats probably what got in the mind of Adam McIlwee and Ben Walsh, the two founders. They were almost imedietely being followed, after the first couple of months, by Brianna Collins at the keyboard, and whoever was available at the drums (no literally, they said this in an interview with stereogum about their beginnings, they had no fixed drummer). In those times, to get your first gigs in a library's basement, you either had to be really good at your riffs, or you needed to make a guerrilla marketing campaign (usually with flyers and posters near schools). They didnt practice much, and for sure didn't do a lot of flyering, but they were picked up by some imageboards and forums, and so this secured some gigs in the area (back in an era where you could search for venues on forums by FUCKING CITY CODE). Their usual hangout spot was the local pizzeria "Buona's Pizza", forever imortalized in the iconic art of their self titled 2008 album that arose them to immortal fame.

Hearing "Tigers Jaw (2008)" in 2026 its an experience. You can hear the 16yo in the lyricism, in the themes and in the titles ("I was never your boyfriend" "Between your band and your other band") and in the haphazard nature of the chords(even if the 2012 reissue, where they were already grown up, is the only one easily accessible). It's the "stream of consciusness" of kids daydreaming while they work at Burger King, pondering on issues that a grown up may find trivial or ridicolous, but that for them is literally their whole world. Not that to say that the album is teenager nonsense, The themes are deep and sometimes uncomfortable, like in "I Saw Water", an heavy plunge into the themes of suicide and the shame that you feel during and after. Probably thats what made them such a hit, they resonated to a generation that was going through the same things, thinking the same thoughts, and offered an outlet to express some feelings that a 16yo could never speak to a grown up about.

As with all things, everything ends one day. Tigers jaw was never meant to be more than a garage band, and with the geographic distances brought about by the enrollment into a college, it became harder and harder to sustain a band life. In 2013, with a Tumblr post, as if to reiterate the "small gig" nature that the band was always meant to have, they announced the breakup of the band. I remember it, I was 14 and I cried that night. Brianna and Ben kept going on tour, but everyone tought of them as the last relics to an age gone past, content of reliving the old glories and scrape a living out of nostalgia.

That changed in 2017, with the release of "Spin". They weren't dead, they were just biding their time.

But something had changed. You could feel it in the themes, the sounds, the chords. The band had grown up, and the music evolved with them. Now the rawness of the strings was replaced by refined harmonies, brought to light by Brianna's angelic voice, perfectly encapsulated in the single "June", a delightful exploration of the dangers of a toxic relation and the bittersweet hope of change. The band went on, and they still go strong, with a new album dropping in march of 2026.

That brings us to the start of this post. Is it even worth it to label a band as a specific genre? Of course we need a method of classification, else how are people meant to even discover things they may like. Labels can't be too broad or narrow, or they may as well be useless. But thats the issue: people change. A band that one day may have a sound and a feel, ten year later may be completely different, sing of different themes and have a whole different vibe. Classifying art, that is a core part of the human existence, runs the risk of falling into the same pits as classifying humans would: dangerous misrepresentation.We may be doing them a disservice by trying to slot them in an arbitrary box, and thats exactly how the aforementioned authors feel. In a 2021 interview, Ben said :"[...]whatever, how people classify things, I think, can be a good thing. But sometimes it can limit people, like if they feel like, “Oh, I don't like such and such type of music,” but we've always just really considered ourselves a rock band. But we pull from a wide array of influence. Not every song is gonna sound like it belongs in the same category. But right now, we just make guitar rock music, I guess, in the simplest sense."

Rock music, I think I just had an aneurysm. But thats the beauty of it, I KNOW its not true, THEY KNOW IT. But how else would you classify it? They changed so much any real classification would be useless. The only thing thats left to do is throw away the box we are trying to fit them in, burn the neoclassical ideas of hyper-classification, and just say: "you know, I like them. And since I like midwest emo, whatever I like is Midwest Emo". And dont worry: people (the ones that are worth it to interact with) will get it.

NOTE OF THE AUTHOR: the titles for the 2008 album on soundcloud are wrong, they are all mixed up! As to reinforce my idea of vibe over labels. The one presented here is "I saw Water"

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I am no Longer Afraid to Die, or the journey to the death of innocence

Change, as a fact of life, is inevitable: the sooner we accept that the better. Change is the motor of life, and generally is always worth it, even when its not readily apparent. As we discussed previously, music (as expression of the people who make it) changes. And its okay. People mature, priorities shift, we get better in some things and lose interests in others.
Yet... I can't, in good conscience, say that every change is good. People can change for the worse. They shouldn't, but it happens, sometimes by choice, sometimes as a consequence of a bad hand life dealt them. Yet, this is not the case. The guys behind this band didn't suddenly become bad people, or did bad things. They just, as many people do, grew up. And changed.
Today we are mourning the death of youthful naivety, the death of hope for a better future, through the experiences of a group of people who left their mark in music.

This band, whose name "The World is a Beautiful Place & I am no longer Afraid to die" (TWIABP for short) started as a joke between friends, officially started in Connecticut, in the city of Willimantic. The year was 2009, emo revival was in full swing. 4 kids in a garage, that's how they started. Not much is known of the early days, but Tyler Bussey, Nicole Shanholtzer, Thomas Diaz, and Josh Cyr released some first singles between 2010 and 2012. This got them a lot of attention, culminating in the contact with the label Topshelf Records. This allowed the band to start working on a full scale album. These were hard beginnings: the lead singer Diaz, who was supposed to do the majority of the vocals, had to retire due to medical issues, and Dave Bello had to jump in midway. There were also times when the lack of a cohesive goal threatened the possibility of finishing the piece. Nevertheless, the album Whenever, if ever was born. And emo as a genre would never be the same.

This first album is honest and heartfelt. In the almost post-rock inspired guitar chords it manages to capture the youthful willingness to change the world and overcome any obstacle, the overwhelming belief that this can be achieved if only we, as a specie, could work together. All the songs are impregnated with this spirit, from "Picture of a tree thar doesn't look okay", a heartfelt journey into Diaz mind and the gutwrenching indecision of either staying with the band (and finishing his work as lead singer) or looking after his own health (and leaving for good). Or "getting Sodas", the closing piece of the album, that coined the band’s core idea: “The world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way…”, a phrase that became a philosophical anchor for their whole worldview. This is what the group was all about. A collective that grew up to 8 people, all working at the album at the same time, with no leader or organization. Everyone helped each other, not one voice grew louder than the others, and they succeeded in creating something beautiful. And now they want to show the world that together, we too can do it.

And they didn't stop and wallow in their early success. They kept fighting for a better future, the only way they knew how: by releasing a second album: in 2015 Harmlessness got released. Their instrumentation became more refined, the themes broader, the harmonies expanded, but the core themes were the same: strength in unity. The header, "you cant live here forever", is emblematic of this: it explores themes of fear of change (and death) with a sort of " maternal kindness" (almost as if aknowledging the difficulty of talking of such arguments) that was never heard before or since in 4th wave emo. Its core message being: "we live in crooked times, but if we start acknowledging the issues we face instead of hiding our head under the sand, we can change things".

But people change. And America changed a lot. The 2016 election was a pivotal moment, and while I (not being american) can't say if the shift was good or bad, it happened. It shaped public conscience in a way that not even the pandemic of 2020 had, and its ripples are still felt 10 years later. This, for many left leaning individuals, represented a threat difficult to be ignored, and many of them decided to take action. But in an ever more "burning" political climate, protest gave way to hate. And this hate started seeping through art.

The band started on a path of political radicalization, and with it the themes their music changed. Their softer themes started to shift into shorter, angrier songs, charged with resentment and a sense of betrayal, and the whole mood shifted. Nowadays, I don't consider them that good of a band anymore. And it has nothing to do with politics, it has EVERYTHING to do with a change in life perspective: hope gave way to anger. They even renounced to the title of "emo" band, saying in many interview that they never were an emo band, they were just lumped in together because they emerged right at the same time. As a fan of the genre as a whole, this feels like a betrayal, but not of me or their fans, but of their whole history.

For me, the last "felt" album was Illusory Walls. The album, whose title was inspired by Dark souls, is a journey into the emotions we hide and suppress. Tears still roll down my face when I listen to the last track, "Fewer Afraid", whose ending chorus is a key shift of the one from "Getting sodas". To me it feels like an eulogy. A goodbye to what the band was, a goodbye to that innocence that made us all fall in love with them and believe in their words. They changed. But to be honest, this sort of change happens aplenty in a lot of people when they "grow up". We are accustomed to it, we grew numb. Some people even consider it natural and expected: if you don't pass the threshold of jadedness, you will never be considered truly mature. What does this really says to the state of contemporary humanity?

The Hotelier, the exhaustion of survival and the dangers in familiarity

Life can feel like a cloudy day. That's the best way I can describe the times when even the act of pretending feels like a chore. I have an heartfelt belief that this feeling is more widespread than what every one of us believes. And I am not talking about the old millennial way of thinking "everyone is depressed", I am trying to make the point that this state of mind is a core part of the human existence, the poison of self-awareness . My personal theory is that every human being that ever lived and that will ever live has dealt or will deal with this thought, that living itself, CONSCIOUNTLY deciding to live and not just "autopiloting through life", is an uphill battle. Social norms and societies shape the way this feeling is dealt with.
But the fact is that this feeling is uncomfortable, and living with it unbearable. And having one cloudy day after another, some people lose hope. And in the frantic race, the unendurable itch of ridding themselves of this unnatural feeling, as foreign to the human mind as a cancer is to the human body, they commit the unspeakable. They choose the crueler way out, cruel to themselves, cruel to their loved ones, cruel to the concept itself of life.
And while one can only hope their pain ended with that act, for those of us witnessing the most unnatural of actions, its a pain that its difficoult to swallow. And many people try to cope in any way they can, even by making art. Art that serves a dual purpose: both as an outlet and as a warning.
The Hotelier, or rather, The Hotel Year as they were originally called, started in 2009. The original founders were 4 High School friends: Christian Holden, Chris Hoffman, Zack Shaw, and Sam Frederick. After their lessons at the small school in Dudley, Massachusetts, they would end up playing music, and being inspired by the DIY Punk scene, they got out a few of their early singles. In 2011 they changed name to the more original The Hotelier, and published their first full length album: It Never Goes Out. They were still quite young still, and in this early record its still visible the roots of the punk scene they grew up with: the sounds are raw, energetic and pop-ish. Nevertheless, a small undertone of what they would become is apparent,, with their connected chords and choice of themes. Its at this point, when they were recognized as a notorious, even if local, band, that Zach left the band, and was substituted by Cody Millet.
After Zach's departure, the band slowly began to change: maybe it was maturity, maybe was a change in their private life or even the feeling of the entire nation shifted. Amidst this turmoil, in-between uncertain times, they began to write. And by the act of writing and composing the truth came out, a hard if needed truth that we should all take notice of. And The hotelier said:"let there be home".
Home, like nowplace is there came just when the world needed it. This 2014 album was a breakthrough like few after or before it. It was acclaimed as one of the GREATEST of emo revival, praised by fans and critics. This record is about being alive when you don’t feel safe anywhere — not even inside yourself — and choosing to remain anyway. The core theme is the emotional collapse of "home" intended not as a physical place but as the inner sanctum of one's ego, what we consider our safe space (being it a place, people or a piece of media), and how to survive its collapse. Chris, in various interviews told that this album deals with "heavy stuff", as toxic relationships, abuse, trauma and, even, suicide.
Its the last part that is the heaviest to digest: we are used to bands talking of relationships and abuse, we almost expect it, but suicide is always a deep personal issue that everyone must internalize in its own way. Here comes "Your Deep Rest", the most tragic of the album's songs, about the guilt that is felt after witnessing such an act. The song doesn't glorifies suicide, but neither falling into the cliche of "living is okay". Instead it treats it realistically: surviving is exhausting.
After the huge hit, they started going on tour, worldwide, and basking in their well deserved glory. Yet they did not stop there, publishing in 2016 Goodness: in their words, they did so in hope of "relearn love and explore personal growth as an adult". It was more texturally varied than previous work, including spoken-word elements, field recordings, and layered instruments while keeping emotional intensity, and well acclaimed by critics. After 2018, their activity declined: i think they felt that they said all that they had to, and now the torch passes to us: to learn and find our own way, using their experience as a way to guide us, but not lead us.
I want to close this piece with a little note: I struggled to publish this, both with personal reasons and a deep sense of ineptitude to approach such a heavy argument. But then again, who is really the most qualified person to talk about suicide? Is it the psychologists, and their scientific method? Is it priests, and their reliance on a word that was made flesh and showed us the gift of life? Is it survivors, who realized the uselessness of the act? Is it people who lost a loved one, and the scars they will show forever? I don't think a mathematically exact answer exists. As with the whole of the human existence, in the end we are left alone to decide what is what. And isn't it the best example of free will?

The Hotelier, the exhaustion of survival and the dangers in familiarity

Life can feel like a cloudy day. That's the best way I can describe the times when even the act of pretending feels like a chore. I have an heartfelt belief that this feeling is more widespread than what every one of us believes. And I am not talking about the old millennial way of thinking "everyone is depressed", I am trying to make the point that this state of mind is a core part of the human existence, the poison of self-awareness . My personal theory is that every human being that ever lived and that will ever live has dealt or will deal with this thought, that living itself, CONSCIOUNTLY deciding to live and not just "autopiloting through life", is an uphill battle. Social norms and societies shape the way this feeling is dealt with.
But the fact is that this feeling is uncomfortable, and living with it unbearable. And having one cloudy day after another, some people lose hope. And in the frantic race, the unendurable itch of ridding themselves of this unnatural feeling, as foreign to the human mind as a cancer is to the human body, they commit the unspeakable. They choose the crueler way out, cruel to themselves, cruel to their loved ones, cruel to the concept itself of life.
And while one can only hope their pain ended with that act, for those of us witnessing the most unnatural of actions, its a pain that its difficoult to swallow. And many people try to cope in any way they can, even by making art. Art that serves a dual purpose: both as an outlet and as a warning.
The Hotelier, or rather, The Hotel Year as they were originally called, started in 2009. The original founders were 4 High School friends: Christian Holden, Chris Hoffman, Zack Shaw, and Sam Frederick. After their lessons at the small school in Dudley, Massachusetts, they would end up playing music, and being inspired by the DIY Punk scene, they got out a few of their early singles. In 2011 they changed name to the more original The Hotelier, and published their first full length album: It Never Goes Out. They were still quite young still, and in this early record its still visible the roots of the punk scene they grew up with: the sounds are raw, energetic and pop-ish. Nevertheless, a small undertone of what they would become is apparent,, with their connected chords and choice of themes. Its at this point, when they were recognized as a notorious, even if local, band, that Zach left the band, and was substituted by Cody Millet.
After Zach's departure, the band slowly began to change: maybe it was maturity, maybe was a change in their private life or even the feeling of the entire nation shifted. Amidst this turmoil, in-between uncertain times, they began to write. And by the act of writing and composing the truth came out, a hard if needed truth that we should all take notice of. And The hotelier said:"let there be home".
Home, like nowplace is there came just when the world needed it. This 2014 album was a breakthrough like few after or before it. It was acclaimed as one of the GREATEST of emo revival, praised by fans and critics. This record is about being alive when you don’t feel safe anywhere — not even inside yourself — and choosing to remain anyway. The core theme is the emotional collapse of "home" intended not as a physical place but as the inner sanctum of one's ego, what we consider our safe space (being it a place, people or a piece of media), and how to survive its collapse. Chris, in various interviews told that this album deals with "heavy stuff", as toxic relationships, abuse, trauma and, even, suicide.
Its the last part that is the heaviest to digest: we are used to bands talking of relationships and abuse, we almost expect it, but suicide is always a deep personal issue that everyone must internalize in its own way. Here comes "Your Deep Rest", the most tragic of the album's songs, about the guilt that is felt after witnessing such an act. The song doesn't glorifies suicide, but neither falling into the cliche of "living is okay". Instead it treats it realistically: surviving is exhausting.
After the huge hit, they started going on tour, worldwide, and basking in their well deserved glory. Yet they did not stop there, publishing in 2016 Goodness: in their words, they did so in hope of "relearn love and explore personal growth as an adult". It was more texturally varied than previous work, including spoken-word elements, field recordings, and layered instruments while keeping emotional intensity, and well acclaimed by critics. After 2018, their activity declined: i think they felt that they said all that they had to, and now the torch passes to us: to learn and find our own way, using their experience as a way to guide us, but not lead us.
I want to close this piece with a little note: I struggled to publish this, both with personal reasons and a deep sense of ineptitude to approach such a heavy argument. But then again, who is really the most qualified person to talk about suicide? Is it the psychologists, and their scientific method? Is it priests, and their reliance on a word that was made flesh and showed us the gift of life? Is it survivors, who realized the uselessness of the act? Is it people who lost a loved one, and the scars they will show forever? I don't think a mathematically exact answer exists. As with the whole of the human existence, in the end we are left alone to decide what is what. And isn't it the best example of free will?

American Beauty, or the elegance of not really trying to "make it"

Fame and success. Raise your hand if you never dreamed of it: everyone, in any field that mankind has ever laid their hands on, has expired to such a thing. To be recognized as the only authority in such a place, to be so famous as to be stopped in the streets by people with only a passing knowledge of the matter but still recognizing you. It's normal to think of glory even in not such venial terms, success can be lived also in quietness: one has not to put themself in the spotlight, and sometimes the knowledge of making such a good job that others appreciate the "author and not only the art" can be enough of a reward.
But success, as we all know, carries also negative connotations: Hollywood filmography is chocked full of depictions of fame as a suffocating cage that ends up trapping the person, rather than elevating it. From the incessant glare of the paparazzi's flashes to the pressure of always being at the top of your game, fame can feel like a chore. Sometimes, mediocrity can feel like a blessing in disguise.
And so it only feels normal that fame, while aspired to by the many, is shunned by the few who know of the truth (and are not blinded enough by the shiny lights of a life lived under never-blinking gazes). And sometimes its the love for the art itself that leads to the artist to seek seclution, for the fear (always more founded) that exposing oneself to the maws of the public will have an effect on the art itself. And its true, exposing your art to an evergrowing audience WILL change it, fame will change the author and in turn the art itself will change. Therefore, sometimes the best form of preservation is secrecy.
And I think the band that we will talk about today really embraced this. Midwest emo is always thought as a very niche genre, even if its not really the case. All the bands try and keep an impression of "small garage band", even if almost all of them do it for the Tiktokable ahestetic rather than a desire to fly under the radar. And while I don't think this by itself can be classified as a bad thing(its the same with punk, or at least it was), American Beauty does it for the love of their own art, to preserve the essence.
Not much is known about this band, only that they started in New Jersey sometimes in 2017. And I am not joking saying that this is the extent of the knowledge many fans have of them. Really, thats it. If you aren't lucky enough to have been present at some of their small gigs in NJ, you wouldn't even know their names. But this small 3 person's band left such a strong impression on the emo scene as a whole that they are widely regarded as the Brightest comet in all of midwest emo. They passed fast, but their light shone bright enough to leave a lasting impression in EVERYONE who listened to their works. And there arent even many of them.
In total, its not even 12 pieces, between ALL OF THEIR ALBUMS. But that gives us the oportunity to feature them more in depth. Blessing in disguise.
Lets start with their Demo Tapes, a collection of 2 of their earliest works. While works of an earlier age, we can see the pattern that will mnake their first album great: raw vocals, a powerfull bass, and almost hypnotic rhytm to their guitar strings that will leave the listener breathless.
In 2018 they expanded their scope with their first real album, Summer Sucks. The saying "more of the same" has never had more positive connotations: the sounds are the same ones of the songs in the demo, even if the instrumentation is more refined. The core motif of the whole album is the ones of Summer Loves, with all the joys and pains it takes. The youth in their voices is still readily apparent, but the apex is found in the track Canadian Ugly", with ones of the most powerful longing songs of all times, distilled in 3 minutes. The distorted vocals add to the ambiance, helping to give away the impression of drunked rambling.
2020. The height of the COVID scare. People locked in their rooms. The apocalypse, who street cryers proselityzed for so much time, had finally come. And in the middle of the end times, it came. Their self titled album, simply called American Beauty. This is where my love for them started. What began as yet another screamo emo band, became the apex of guitar melodies and muffled lyricism. The album is short, 4 pieces, but please, do yourself a favour and listen to it in its entiretly: you will not regret it. The guitar riffs are now immaculate; the melodies beautiful in their complexities, are now centered around the electric guitar and not the bass, with the former sounding clean and not distorted.
This was really the album that gave them recognition, even if not fame outside of the midwest emo circle. When people think of them, even now, they think of either "the gang gets emo" or "Carolina". They published a split in 2021 collabing with Innerlove, contributing 2 tracks, and started having some online presence both on facebook and on twitter.
Then, after late 2021, the silence. They stopped going on tour, they stopped publishing updates on facebook, and they even deleted their Twitter account. The silence, to the fans, sounded so unnatural that they began to speculate: people talked to them being canceled, having made a very controversial tweet, or having personal issues that they need to resolve, or even them working to a new, bigger-than-ever album, one that would take the midwest emo scene by force and cement them into immortal fame.
The reality is, they simply stopped. The few of us who are in the known understood that the band just stopped making sense to them. They took normal jobs, like being an Amazon courier, to make ends meet; with the music passing in second place in their life, maybe even disappearing alltogether in their list of priorities. I would like to think it was a conscious choice: they saw the state the genre is, with frontline bands being ever more recognized, bringing in many new people, and with them the forever hungry corporate scavengers. Maybe they decided to gatekeep themselves, to not fall prey to the slopification of music.
I always hated the term Gatekeeping, I have a theory it was invented by industry plants to undermine the fundamentally human urge of tribalism. It has the hallmarks of soulless corporate jargon: vague, status-signaling, soulless responsibility-dodging language that avoids clarity. Its often used as a conversation stopper by denigrating the accused, making him seem like almost an animal, a rabid guard dog that is ready to jump at the throat of the innocents. Even if those innocents are a forever growing horde of "content locusts", ready to devour the essence of what makes art great, and turn it into easily digestible material, ready to be sold to the dopamine-starved masses for scraps, leaving a hollow shelf of what it once was. Music has already fallen, but don't let small genres be consumed.