A Conversation with Ian Cohen on Emo
"What makes a band emo is whether or not I like it" -Ian Cohen, totally serious.
If you don’t know who Ian Cohen is, I don’t know how you know who I am. When I was getting into music journalism at 16 or 17 years old, I made a presentation for my creative writing class that included excerpts from some of my favorite music reviews. A slide was dedicated to Ian’s Pitchfork review of Charmer by Tigers Jaw. Back then, I could barely place what about that album drew me in so much. Ian summed it up in a sentence: “[Vocalist Adam] McIlwee is either conceding to cynicism as a natural state or reveling in it.” He continued:
“Of course, none of Charmer should be taken as an endorsement of that kind of attitude, just a depiction of it. People primarily motivated by their sexual desires and loneliness can be self-absorbed and not all that concerned with their effects on other people. It happens, and it’s not like anyone on Charmer seems happy about it, as its dreary emotional state can be too convincingly mirrored by the music at times. However, those lulls end up creating the simmering tension that gets relieved on ‘Slow Come On’ by a flurry of drum rolls and McIlwee’s vocals just nearing a scream. It’s a chilling example of an asshole revealing his true colors, telling someone who doesn’t turn him on about the kind of person who does—‘I don’t even care how mean they are/ So I don’t ever take your calls.’”
Not to boost Ian’s ego or anything. I did resent him at times—like when he called Balance And Composure’s lyrics “sensitive dude poetry” (which…he wasn’t wrong about, and I knew that). But I probably read more of him than any other music writer because—at that age—I was consumed by emo and wanted to read more criticisms, opinions, and interpretations of that type of music. Ian was doing it the most, at least from what I saw. He’s gained a lot of followers this way, and has become a significant voice in emo. People trust him, and people argue with him.
Ian and I talked for an hour—30 minutes about common discourses in the genre, and then another 30 minutes about more specific things I wondered about. I’m just including the discourse content, because it’s the most important. Maybe another time I’ll transcribe the rest of the interview and you’ll know his hot takes on The Menzingers and Title Fight and Real Friends. But for now, read our conversations about what “emo” really means, whether or not it’s something people should be proud of, and why it’s so memefied.
Danielle: What do you think of the mission to “make emo respected”?
Ian: It’s always an interesting dynamic to talk about what “respect” really means. When Emo Nite LA was popping off—in a way that embarrasses me now—I got super protective about the branding and how you would go there and they would be playing all this stuff from the Myspace era which is stuff that doesn’t even count as emo at all. What I think about what it means to be respected—I think about when I was coming up at 20/21 years old and this was when Pitchfork was just shitting all over The Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, The Promise Ring—golden age type stuff. As someone who read that stuff regularly and ended up writing there, it bothered me that so many other forms of music that was being deemed as made for teenagers or spoke to a certain kind of emotion was given a path but something about that was totally disrespected then. I think that’s fine. I think the people who wrote that back then actually hated it that much, so I respect that.
At least for me, it was seeing that this music was great and it needed a voice to it. I think part of being “respected” was playing it off against what’s disrespected. You have the Myspace stuff, the swoop hair, the Hot Topic stuff. And yet the irony of it when I look from a longer perspective it’s like, who am I to say that that kind of stuff—that someone 10 years younger than I am grew up on and that made them get emo—is less worthy of respect than stuff I like because it didn’t get as popular?
I think that we’re starting to see as time goes on that there’s room to respect both the stuff that I’m into as I’m pushing 40 so the Midwestern stuff, the Polyvinyl stuff, as well as the Fueled By Ramen stuff and all the stuff that was popular on MTV. I think where people get into trouble is getting in fights over what really counts as emo. For me, my battle was to convince people at Pitchfork and people who were my age that not only was there great music in the 90s but in 2013 and 2014 there’s this wave of stuff that draws on it and it sounds like emo but I gotta tell you guys it sounds nothing like crabcore or Panic! At the Disco. When we talk about respect in the critical realm that’s what it meant for me. I think it was really just getting that stuff to be addressed at all. But now I would say that there’s people I really respect who can look back at the Myspace stuff, the metalcore stuff, the scene kid stuff and make the same case. To them, I might be the kind of person who was a snob in the same way the indie kids were snobs to emo in like 2001.
For me, I just find it ironic when people talk about making emo respected because it’s rooted in self-deprecation and laughing at yourself. Especially when it became theatrical in the third wave, but even before that.
Back in 2003 or 2004, when I started to see stuff shift towards theatrical, ‘I want to take a chainsaw to my girlfriend’ or whatever, just over-the-top kind of stuff, I was like 23 or 24 and I was like, Yeah, okay, this stuff? Not really for me anymore. For the next bunch of years I was like, I’m going straight to indie rock. It’s so funny because I make fun of kids who do that now. I recognize that in myself. What happens is when I see people absorb the first Taking Back Sunday album as a teen, I think they get it to a degree that someone of my age couldn’t have. They see the self-deprecation, the drama of it and how it’s kind of intentionally over-the-top. There’s something worthwhile to that. It’s like pop music right there. I think you make a great point as far as like, What the fuck are we doing trying to take this stuff seriously?
One thing I actually really love—as frustrating as it is—is to see all the memes and Facebook groups and all that. I wonder if any other genre of indie rock has the same sort of discourse. Are there lots of memes for people who listen to Big Thief or Real Estate? Can they laugh at themselves like this? I think in a lot of ways people who love this music kind of have to make fun of it to truly appreciate it, and that’s the case for anybody. All the people I know who write about emo regularly or post about it, they do make fun of it. That’s why I’ve really tried in my own path to be less serious about what’s real emo and what’s not. Whatever works for them works. If you want to make an Emo Nite replay that’s mostly like Carly Rae Jepsen or whatever, by all means. Just go ahead and do it. Just as long as there’s support for the new stuff.
I think a big reason why emo is one of the most memefied genres is because of the intertwining of culture and music. I also feel like indie has it a bit, like when I think of Big Thief I think of cuffed jeans and pretentious rich kid culture.
I also think with particularly bands in the newest wave, I’ve seen much less separation between the people who listen to it, the people who write about it, and the people who make it. […] Bands come up through the Midwestern emo posting group or the Reddit group and they’re posters at some point and then start a band and say, “Hey check out our band!” Then they grow in that way. There’s so little separation between the people who make the music, the people who consume the music, the guys on the labels. I think that leads to the memeification of it.
Also, it’s a genre that so weaponizes self-awareness. Even in the 90s—all those really florid song titles, bands like I Hate Myself. It’s something where you have to be self-aware. If you completely lack self-awareness, you’re gonna look kind of stupid.
To return to the idea of emo being a vague term and constantly overlapping with indie rock, pop punk, folk, and other genres—I wanted to know what you think makes a band emo.
What makes a band emo is whether or not I like it, nah I’m just kidding. In a way, it’s almost like indie in terms of describing its roots. I think a lot of it comes down to what scene they come from. A band like Glass Beach, for example, they come from that sort of background of posting on Reddit and Twitter and appear to be emo as thought of at any point in history. I want to say that you know it when you see it. There are certain musical aspects with guitars, if there’s tapping or twinkling in it, yeah that’s kind of emo right there. Or the vocal style, if it’s a little more off-key and raw, as opposed to stuff that might just be straight-up indie rock, like Soccer Mommy. I think that’s much more smooth. I think that makes a difference.
I would say, more than anything, a reflection upon an artist’s roots. Some sort of DIY scene or label or who they tour with. I think Soccer Mommy is where the line gets drawn for a lot of people. A lot of it is very self-aware, self-deprecating, a lot of lyrics about depression and being aware of one’s depression, and turning one’s depression into a brand, but when you look at the associations with the band it strikes me as centrist indie rock. Whereas someone like Hop Along, for example, they might not be emo anymore, but if you look at the fact that they played Fest, they have former members of Algernon Cadwallader, Frances’s vocals are more raw and jagged. They’ll probably hate me for using them as a primary example [laughs]. I think a lot of it comes from where they first rose.
To move onto a different discourse, Washed Up Emo tweeted a quote by Leslie Simon the other day that reads: “Once emo is a commodity, it stopped being something that people were proud of.” I was thrown off by this because, first, I never viewed emo as a commodity. Sure it became mainstream at one point, and it had a bunch of connotations tagged onto it, but I never saw it become commodified. Second, I don’t think people were ever proud of being emo.
It’s so funny because so many of these bands that we hold up as the examples of “real emo”—and I think I alluded to this a lot in the Vulture piece I did—like Rites of Spring, Sunny Day Real Estate, all those bands, they hated being called emo. As a matter of fact, I think some of the only bands that are really proud of it are the ones who would be considered as commodifying it.
Every now and again, you’ll see Joyce Manor saying, “Yeah we’re emo and we’re proud of it,” but they’re also kind of kidding. Like, “Yo, we’re real hip hop, son,” that sort of thing doesn’t exist.
Who’s most proud are people who base their entire identity around Fall Out Boy as a teen or liking Panic! At the Disco or just being a scene kid or whatever. Those people are proud as hell of it. It’s the people who make what would be called “real emo” that are not so proud of it. They’re like, “No, man, we’re just indie rock,” or, “No, we’re post-hardcore.” I say just—whoever wants to be it, by all means. Who would be trying to glom onto that nowadays to further their career? [laughs] What does it even mean to commodify? […] Go ahead and commodify it. I want to see these bands make money. I want to see them get those festival bookings. I want to see those guys get good reviews.
That quote just bothered me because it made it sound like an epidemic or something.
Yeah. I get it where it’s coming from, and if you look at the context of time, yeah, in 2006 or 2007 if someone were to say to me, “Hey what kind of music are you into?” and if I were someone whose formative years were spent listening to the Appleseed Cast and Braid, I’d have to get ready to mansplain what real emo is or just say I’m into indie rock instead. I get that as someone who is 40 and also I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Like with metal, you can be into thrash, Metallica, and also like Bon Jovi or Mötley Crue or whatever. It’s like any subculture where there’s going to be purity tests.
One of Ian’s favorite emo albums to come out this year is Dogleg’s Melee. Listen to my favorite track from that record below.