The Ultimate Emo Album: Swiss Army Wife, Avec Plaisir, and Celebration Guns Split
"...great impassioned vocals...very fun and kind of sad guy rock.” — Anthony Fantano (The NeedleDrop) on Swiss Army Wife
"...a collection of noodly midwestern emo with gruff, often borderline screamed vocals. Their indisputably fun energy paired with some personal yet relatable lyricism makes this the album equivalent of dying with a smile, or something like that." — Sophie's Floorboard on Swiss Army Wife
"...Every second of An Album radiates with the joy of artists revisiting the music of their youth with a sense of purpose and chops that can only be accessed with age."— UPROXX “The Best Emo Albums Of 2022” on Avec Plaisir
FFO: Ben Quad, Snowing, Hightide Hotel
Genres: Emo, Indie Rock, Math Rock
Standout tracks include: “What Nietzsche Wanted” & “None More Time With Feeling”
Listen to "The Ultimate Emo Album" Everywhere Now
The Ultimate Emo Album is the first in a new series of split albums featuring rising emo artists on the Really Rad Records roster. This volume includes contributions from Portland's Swiss Army Wife, Montreal's Avec Plaisir, and Phoenix emo group Celebration Guns.
About The Bands:
They don’t make ‘em like Swiss Army Wife anymore.
The Portland, Oregon, band’s particular take on emo–heavy on the math riffs, extremely gruff vocally, and fun as hell–might seem quaint in 2022/3, a time when most bands are finding ways to distance themselves as much as possible from the hallmarks of the genre. But the band’s debut full-length, Medium Gnarly, is refreshing in its back-to-basics approach, charming in a way that recalls the scrappy early work of now-iconic groups like You Blew It! or Free Throw.
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Although they’ve been playing together since 2019, Avec Plaisir really came to life in 2022. With the release of their debut LP, the modestly titled An Album, they built on everything impressive about their Demos for Dave and I Don’t Really Car EPs. Throwing emo, math rock, punk, and even flashes of post-rock into a blender, the Montreal foursome have honed their craft.
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Celebration Guns is preoccupied with time. It’s clear in the titles of their last two releases–2020’s On Aging Gracelessly and 2021’s The Visiting Years–and in their song titles: “Something About Hindsight in 2020,” “Old Man Yells at Cloud,” “Better Days,” “The Me That Used to Be.” The idea of a focus on time, the passing and wasting of it, isn’t anything new for an emo band. But the members of Celebration Guns aren’t teenagers pining for the good times with their ex, they’re all in their 40s, and they’ve been doing this for over a decade.
So when the words, “Can I repent for wasted years?” are choked out over a sparkling math riff, you know they mean it. There are any number of bands out there who want to be the next Algernon, the next Snowing, the next Hightide Hotel–and a lot of them rock. Celebration Guns isn’t doing that. They’re just trying to make the music they want to make. There are elements they share with bands like those, though, the bright and jaunty leads, the sticky pop-rock hooks, the wild time signatures. When it comes from Celebration Guns, it just sounds more real, somehow. Call it aging gracefully.
Listen to "The Ultimate Emo Album" Everywhere Now
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