Style No. 6312
Deep Elm / Broken Circles
2000 / 2014
Rating: 9 empty cake boxes out of 10
Why write about this first release by the White Octave, a nearly fifteen year old regional emo album that I doubt many people outside of North Carolina have heard or give a shit about? Because not only do I love this record and get to write about whatever the hell I want to, but it finally got released on vinyl by Broken Circles!
For those who don't know, this group was what musician Stephen Pedersen did between quitting Cursive and starting Criteria. If I remember correctly, Pedersen moved from Omaha to the Triangle area to attend law school (Duke maybe?), or at least that was what I was always told. The band always got lumped in with the emo crowd, at least partially because the album was released on Deep Elm, but I always thought of them as being a little heavier and/or more post-punk than that scene. They're sort of a combination of something like Pedersen's old band Cursive with heavier Dischord-ish fare like Fugazi. And they killed live, something I recently got to re-live during the 2014 edition of the Hopscotch Music Festival.
I have no idea if anyone outside of old timers like myself will give a shit about this re-release, but they should and hopefully will.
