Garrison
"The Model" CD EP (Iodine)
Finally. Emo that doesn't make me want to shoot the most responsible party in the band. While I've never been a huge fan of Garrison's style of post-punk, vaguely hardcore-inflected emo (think Fairweather only with much less volume and no Youth Of Today at all, or Seam with slightly more distorted and angular guitars), compared to the tripe that most bands try to pass off as emotional music these days, it's positively exhilarating to hear songs which don't seem to have explicitly commercial ambitions (too much noise and dissonance). And really, isn't that what emo has become? It's little more than arena rock and Billboard chart aspirations - it's nothing more than the next big record industry correction in waiting. At least Garrison still has some guts and blazes something resembling an original trail.