fire engine red

i almost feel like i should be embarassed by this post. this is afterall essentially prehistoric emo and one of the first signs of life in what became the emeging midwestern music scene. still i loved this album when i was in college. the offender is Departures and Landfalls by kansas city-based band Boy's Life. released in 1995 on Crank!, it had the building up of guitars and punkish vocals, only to pull back into hushed restraint thing down to a tee. their use of atmospheric sounds such a traffic, crickets and such was a fairly original touch for band that was supposed to appeal to the punk corwd at the time. it really should stand as a seminal record, sitting on some sort of "before it all went wrong" emo hall of fame with Christie Front Drive, Evergreen, Mineral and SDRE, but you don't really hear too much about them or the album (which is why i'm writing about it). curiously half the group is now in the less wrought, country hued lo-fi project Canyon.

Boy's Life "Fire Engine Red"