Last year was a fantastic year for emo, pop-punk, or whatever you want to call it. The mostly misappropriated genre tag has gone through many life cycles—from Rites Of Spring to Fall Out Boy—and here we are again with another wave of bands made up of kids that grew up with CD booklets filled with Cap’n Jazz and American Football records.
Three acts that have been on nearly every genre primer published in the last 10 months were on display Tuesday night as Into It. Over It., The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, and A Great Big Pile Of Leaves shared the stage at DC9.
Chicago’s Evan Weiss, who performs under the moniker Into It. Over It., appears to have the most immediate cross-over appeal. Intersections, his crisp and thoughtful 2013 release, might have been what the group was touring behind but it was more of a showcase for fully realized versions of these songs on stage instead of just the studio. Weiss has spent plenty of time on the road as Into It. Over It., but this is the first tour with a full band so the setlist was filled with the most full-throated material from his extensive discography.
Jovial and charming, Weiss spent most of the show preaching positivity and inclusiveness between tightly spun guitars and a thundering rhythm section while giving shout outs to local DIY hotspots Hole In The Sky and The Lab. That ethos and spirit felt even more apparent with Willimantic, Connecticut middle-card The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die.
The post-rock/experimental touches on Whenever, If Ever subverted emo archetypes as they put a unique twist on what an emo band is supposed to sound like in 2014. The batch of songs that made up the album had them landing on a handful of best of lists last year including our own. The group’s set Tuesday night, much like its debut record, was filled with peaks and valleys between the lament of “Picture Of A Tree That Doesn’t Look Okay” and the hopeful, soaring climax of “Getting Sodas.”
Brooklyn’s A Great Big Pile Of Leaves and promising D.C. upstarts Makeshift Shelters opened the night with two different takes on pop-punk. Leaves spent their set highlighting the playful melodies from its 2013 album You’re Always On My Mind which had me pining for warmer weather. Shelters on the other hand got by on pure energy and blistering tracks, winning over a room dedicated to the band’s playing after them.
