Remember when emo wasn’t just some watered-down pop-punk version of goth? No? Well . . . it wasn’t.
It’s hard to think of such a time’s existing now, with so many tepid My Chemical Romance derivatives clogging the scene — but Philly four-piece Everyone Everywhere have turned out an album that sounds like a refresher course in 1997, smartly recombining the elements that made emo a lightning rod (for creativity and criticism) and getting them to work anew. This band know their way around a rapturous rock album, from the swelling changes of “From the Beginning to the Tail” to the pop-punk playfulness and dynamic switcheroos of “Blown Up Grown Up.”
Despite sharing its sonic sensibilities with the best records by the Promise Ring, Braid, and the Get Up Kids, Everyone Everywhere doesn’t sound smuggled from the past. It sounds like the perfect summer record for right now, beaming with the kind of confidence that was abundant back in the day.
EVERYONE EVERYWHERE + THE CALL UP + WHERE THE LAND MEETS THE SEA + PORQUE I SAID SO | O’Brien’s, 3 Harvard Ave, Allston | May 29 at 9 pm | 21+ | $7 | obrienspubboston.com
