There is a Lifetime of Fun Stuck Between the Machinery of Your Memory, Go Get It

Depsite Braid being the band who stuck with me the most out of the Midwest's celebrated emo scene in the 90's (well, them or The Get-Up Kids, who were the soundtrack to my anxiety about relationships in university), I was, for some reason, hesitant to listen to the post-Braid band Hey Mercedes.





I think most of that hesitancy came from their name, which kind of sounds like late-aughts Fuelled by Ramen fare.

I eventually got around to listening to their album Everynight Fire Works (embedded above) while at work recently and it fucking blew me away. All the parts that make Braid part of my emo pantheon, the mathy riffs, the stop/start rhythms, and the major league vocal hooks, are still there, but delivered with a little bit more of a power-pop sheen. The songs are strong and catchy and the riffs make me eager to get home from work so that I can learn them on guitar. The album is super strong front-to-back and I feel comfortable calling it a masterpiece.

Nothing else to say, just wanted to share something that I've been really digging lately.

Also, might as well link Frame and Canvas by Braid here too, because if you are reading this and haven't listened to what might be the pinnacle of the emo genre, you really owe it to yourself to get into it:

The Wrong Life Again

Hard Girls, who released the excellent A Thousand Surfaces in 2014, just put out a new EP for free/donation on Quote Unquote Records this week. Though it is brief, at 3 songs, two of which being new and on being a live version of "Flying Dream", it certainly picks up where the riff masterpiece that was their last album left off. "Get Up", the acoustic number that ends the thing, is my favourite song so far this year, but we're only a month into 2016, so I guess that's a dumb thing to say. It hits me pretty fucking hard, is what I was trying to say.

I think you should probably check it out. The fact that's it's free doesn't hurt either.

Click on the pic for it!

Here's to hoping that this means a new album from a very, very good band.