Three throwback records to listen to this fall from a former emo kid.

Elena Hernandez - Music Editor

As someone who shopped at Hot Topic exclusively until I was halfway through high school, I can confirm: it isn’t a phase. Just like the time goes back in the fall, I revert to listening to a lot of the music that soundtracked my adolescence. Something about it is feels better once the temperature drops below sixty degrees.

Here are three of my favorite emo records that seem to encapsulate the leaves changing color and the first time you see your breath in the morning.

Pierce the Veil - A Flair for the Dramatic (2007)

            A Flair for the Dramatic is Pierce the Veil’s debut record and arguably their most underrated. The group hasn’t performed anything from it since 2017. The record is quite unique, utilizing lead singer Vic Fuentes’s distinctive voice to capture the listener’s attention from the get-go. Opening track “Chemical Kids and Mechanical Brides” features a haunting introduction from a heavily reverbed Fuentes. He sings: “Like a rush shot through you / Everyone is watching you.” Brash electric guitars, aggressive drums, and descriptive lyrics are threads that launch themselves in this first track and continue throughout the record. “Yeah Boy and Doll Face” is a die-hard fan favorite that utilizes powerful, vivid songwriting. Fuentes sings of the doctor “dancing in while the ambulances sing.”

            My two personal favorites from the record are “I’d Rather Die Than Be Famous” and “Currents Convulsive.” In the former, we’re thrown into Fuentes’s screaming vocals accompanied by fast, energetic instrumentals. He shouts, “(Call the police! This whole place is gonna burn!) / Come on, Holly, put the gun down for me / (Call the police! This whole place is gonna burn!) / You love money and the sex in your veins…They’re trying to take it from us, they’re trying to take it from us.”

            In a 2007 interview, when asked about the song, Fuentes said, “That song was written about people who lose themselves in success and fame. I don’t ever want that to happen to us. I hate when people think they are better than you or don’t treat you with respect if you aren’t “famous” enough. It’s all bullshit.”

            Another track I remember playing through my wired earbuds often is “The Balcony Scene.” It begins with a simple piano riff that gets stuck in your head. In the song, Fuentes sings to someone who is contemplating suicide and possibly doesn’t comprehend how serious death truly is. He tries to make the unknown subject see the value in their life and coax them off “the edge.”  He sings: “Have you ever really danced on the edge? / Is something still scaring you? / Have you ever really danced on the edge? / The count of three is up… Just hold my hand and jump / And bright lights mean nothing to you / ‘Cause no one would know the sound of a ghost.”

My Chemical Romance - I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (2002)

            My Chemical Romance’s debut record I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (often shortened to Bullets) is my favorite of all their albums. That’s thanks to the hardcore in-your-face punk production accompanied by vigorous vocals from singer Gerard Way. These are all reasons I consider the album a no-skip. Bullets “set a precedent for all the [other MCR albums] — following a distinct storyline.”

Each song contains a different story of two lovers who’ll eventually be tragically taken from each other. For example, “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville” deals with a man having to kill his girlfriend before she turns into a zombie. “Drowning Lessons,” my favorite MCR song of all time, details a man “killing his lover on their wedding day in a drug-fueled haze.” The album’s closer, “Demolition Lovers,” follows a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like duo who ultimately die together “in a hail of bullets.”

            “Headfirst for Halos” is a favorite of mine. A tale of suicide, it begins with an epic instrumental intro with flairs from guitarist Ray Toro. The lyrics paint a disturbing and sometimes uncomfortable picture. Way cheerfully shouts, “I can’t begin to let you know just what I’m feeling / And now, the red ones make me fly and the blue ones help me fall / And I think I’ll blow my brains against the ceiling / And as the fragments of my skull begin to fall / Fall on your tongue like pixie dust, just think happy thoughts / We’ll fly home.”

Returning to “Drowning Lessons,” its uneasy, vivid imagery through songwriting is what makes it so special to me. Way sings, “Without a sound, I took her down / And dressed in red and blue, I squeezed / Imaginary wedding gown / That you can’t wear in front of me…I dragged her down, I put her out / And back there, I left her where no one could see / And lifeless, cold into this well / I stared as this moment was held for me.”

What pulls the track together is its somehow triumphant bridge. “These hands, stained red / From the times I have killed you and then / We can wash down this engagement ring / With poison and kerosene / We’ll laugh as we die / And we’ll celebrate the end of things / With cheap champagne.” The song ends with Way repeating, “Without a sound, and I wish you away.” Some fans have theorized this line suggests the narrator disposed of his lover’s body in the well previously mentioned.

Brand New - Deja Entendu (2003)

            Brand New’s sophomore record Deja Entendu was originally released in 2003. Frontman Jessie Lacey explained in an interview with MTV that the title, which is French for “already heard before,” is commentary about the group’s music. He said, “It’s very tongue-in-cheek. No matter who you are or what your band is about, you can't put a record out without people saying it's derivative of something else. So, by saying the record's already been heard, it's kind of like saying, 'Yeah, you're right. We're doing something that's already been done before.' We're not trying to break new ground in music. We're just trying to make good music."

Since its release, the record has often been considered one of the best from the emo genre. It’s also been placed on multiple lists as one of the greatest records to come out of the decade.

            The first track, aside from the short and sweet “Tautou”, is “Sic Transit Gloria…Glory Fades,” It begins with a scene description: “You don’t recover from a night like this / A victim, still lying in bed, completely motionless / A hand moves in the dark to a zipper / Hear a boy bracing tight against sheets barely whisper, / ‘This is so messed up.’” It’s a track mourning the unwanted loss of a childhood through equally unwanted sex. Lacey said it came to be from just a bassline. He sings, “(Up the stairs, the station where / the act becomes the art of growing up) / He keeps his hands pinned down at his sides / He waits for it to end and for the aching in his guts to subside.”

The fifth track, “The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows,” is true pop-punk. When asked about its meaning, Lacey said, “The song is about being in a relationship and knowing that it’s going to end, so you end it prematurely when everything is going good.” It’s followed by “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot,” a song that’s been mythologized in the emo scene. Considered to be one of Brand New’s “greatest lyrical triumphs,” it chronicles a man’s conversation with his girlfriend. “They discuss the possibility of ending the relationship because of the way he’s hurt her, but he slowly manipulates her until he’s able to spin the issue around and blame her for their problems.” He sings, “It’s cold as a tomb and it’s dark in your room / When I sneak to your bed to pour salt in your wounds…Call me a safe bet, I’m betting I’m not / Glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes / You can forget.”