Icarus | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | February 25, 2003 | |||
Genre | Pop rock, indie rock | |||
Length | 18:12 | |||
Label | Threespheres | |||
Producer | Steve Albini | |||
The Forms chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
PopMatters | positive |
Icarus is the first studio album by the Forms, produced by Steve Albini [2] [3] and released on February 25, 2003. [4]
Upon release, Icarus gained generally positive reviews, [5] and critics compared the band favorably to early-emo rock group Sunny Day Real Estate. [2] [6] Mac Randall of The New York Observer described the band as "aggro-artsy trio fond of awkward time signatures, sly rhythmic manipulation, curlicuing vocal lines, and giving one song two separate track numbers for no obvious reason... [T]hese guys make a virtue out of attention-deficit disorder." [6] PopMatters called the band "one of the most exciting, if not one of the best, new acts in indie rock right now." [7]
Emo is a music genre characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of hardcore punk and post-hardcore from the mid-1980s Washington, D.C. hardcore scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore. The bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, among others, pioneered the genre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop-punk bands, including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Cap'n Jazz, and Jimmy Eat World. By the mid-1990s, Braid, the Promise Ring, and the Get Up Kids emerged from Midwest emo, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the genre. Meanwhile, screamo, a more aggressive style of emo using screamed vocals, also emerged, pioneered by the San Diego bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Screamo achieved mainstream success in the 2000s with bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Story of the Year, Thursday, the Used, and Underoath.
Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent record labels, by the 1990s it became more widely associated with the music such bands produced.
Alternative rock is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge subgenre in the United States, and the Britpop and shoegaze subgenres in the United Kingdom and Ireland. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock.
Rites of Spring was an American punk rock band from Washington, D.C., formed in late 1983. Along with Embrace, and Beefeater, they were one of the mainstay acts of the 1985 Revolution Summer movement which took place within the Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scene.
Screamo is a subgenre of emo that emerged in the early 1990s and emphasizes "willfully experimental dissonance and dynamics". San Diego–based bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow pioneered the genre in the early 1990s, and it was developed in the late 1990s mainly by bands from the East Coast of the United States such as Pg. 99, Orchid, Saetia, and I Hate Myself. Screamo is strongly influenced by hardcore punk and characterized by the use of screamed vocals. Lyrical themes usually include emotional pain, death, romance, and human rights. The term "screamo" has frequently been mistaken as referring to any music with screaming.
Brand New was an American rock band formed in 2000 from Long Island, New York. Consisting of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Jesse Lacey, lead guitarist Vincent Accardi, bassist Garrett Tierney and drummer Brian Lane, the band earned critical recognition as one of the most influential emo bands, and was acclaimed for their musical development and artistic innovation compared to other groups in the scene which they originated from.
Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. Like the term "post-punk", the term "post-hardcore" has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Initially taking inspiration from post-punk and noise rock, post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black, Jawbox, Quicksand, and Shellac that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. Dischord Records became a major nexus of post-hardcore during this period.
American rock has its roots from 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music, and also draws from folk music, jazz, blues, and classical music. American rock music was further influenced by the British Invasion of the American pop charts from 1964 and resulted in the development of psychedelic rock.
Jale was a Canadian alternative rock band from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Contemporaries of Sloan and The Super Friendz, they formed in 1992 and was part of the Halifax Pop Explosion scene in the 1990s. They released three records as a band before disbanding in 1996.
Deja Entendu is the second studio album by American rock band Brand New, released on June 17, 2003, by Triple Crown Records and Razor & Tie. It was widely praised for showing the band's maturation from their pop punk debut Your Favorite Weapon, and critics described the album as the moment when the band "started showing ambition to look beyond the emo/post-hardcore scene that birthed them."
Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday, released on March 26, 2002, through Victory Records. Forming in 1999, the group underwent several lineup changes before settling on vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell. Taking Back Sunday released a five-song demo in early 2001, after which they toured the United States for most of the year. They rented a room in Lindenhurst, New York, where they wrote and demoed songs. In December 2001, the band signed with Victory Records; they began recording their debut album with producer Sal Villanueva at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in New Jersey.
Washington, D.C., hardcore, commonly referred to as D.C. hardcore, sometimes styled in writing as harDCore, is the hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. Emerging in late 1979, it is considered one of the first and most influential punk scenes in the United States.
Your Favorite Weapon is the debut studio album by American rock band Brand New, released in 2001. Recorded and released a year after the band's formation, the album consists of pop punk songs about the highs and lows of teenage life. Your Favorite Weapon received positive reviews from critics and sold over 315,000 copies.
Diary is the debut studio album by American rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, released on May 10, 1994. The album is considered by many to be a defining emo album of the second wave, and key in the development of its subgenre, Midwest emo. It has also been called the missing link between post-hardcore and the nascent emo genre.
Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo is a book by Andy Greenwald, then a senior contributing writer at Spin magazine, published in November 2003 by St. Martin's Press. Greenwald documents the history of the emo genre from its mid 1980s origins in Washington, D.C. to a more recent crop of bands, such as Thursday and Dashboard Confessional. The book received generally favorable reviews from music publications, with it appearing on best-of lists by Alternative Press and NME.
The Forms are an American indie rock band from Queens, New York, whose style incorporates aspects of math rock, dream pop, and emo. The band members include Alex Tween and Matt Walsh.
Emo pop is a fusion genre combining emo with pop-punk, pop music, or both. Emo pop features a musical style with more concise composition and hook-filled choruses. Emo pop has its origins in the 1990s with bands like Jimmy Eat World, the Get Up Kids, Weezer and the Promise Ring. The genre entered the mainstream in the early 2000s with Jimmy Eat World's breakthrough album Bleed American, which included its song "The Middle". Other emo pop bands that achieved mainstream success throughout the decade included Fall Out Boy, the All-American Rejects, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco and Paramore. The popularity of emo pop declined in the 2010s, with some prominent artists in the genre either disbanding or abandoning the emo pop style.