Whenever, If Ever | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | June 18, 2013 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 35:16 | |||
Label | Topshelf | |||
Producer | Chris Teti | |||
The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die chronology | ||||
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AbsolutePunk | 90% [10] |
AllMusic | [1] |
Pitchfork | 7.8/10 [11] |
PopMatters | [12] |
Punknews.org | [5] |
Sputnikmusic | 4.5/5 [13] |
Whenever, If Ever is the debut studio album by American indie rock band The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, released on June 18, 2013, on Topshelf Records.
The record was largely written instrumentally as a five-piece band, with the finished versions of the tracks coming together in the studio with the rest of the members contributing their ideas. The album's songs had been written close to a year before the band entered the studio, and the band made demos for all the songs in every stage of the writing process. Guitarist Nicole Shanholtzer noted that many of the songs progressed into something completely different than the direction they started with, while others stayed relatively unchanged. After production had started, Julia Peters offered to perform cello on the record. The band was so impressed with her playing that she was asked to join the band. [14]
Whenever, If Ever is an emo indie rock album that incorporates elements of hardcore punk, melodic hardcore [15] and post-rock. The album's sound has drawn comparisons to 90s emo and post-hardcore bands such as Mineral, Cap'n Jazz and Sunny Day Real Estate. [16] The album has also been likened to Bright Eyes and the early work of Arcade Fire. [17]
The band achieved an atmospheric, thick, and layered sound on the album by using four vocalists that would share vocal duties throughout. Ian Cohen of Pitchfork remarked, "TWIABP sounds like the kind of band where you get the lead vocals simply by wanting it more-- there’s the adenoidal guy, the screaming guy, someone named "Shitty Greg" who might not be either of them, and they sometimes sing in tandem, initially exaggerating their hiccuping modulations to a degree that feels like trolling; you’ll know pretty quickly if you’re built for this stuff if “Kinsella” is your safe word." To further layer the sound, the band used a three guitarists, synthesizers, cellos and trumpets.
"I think the idea of being self-referential helps connect our entire work into a more cohesive piece about the collective experience of being alive. That is the sort of general idea about the lyrical aspect of our songwriting." [14]
Whenever, If Ever is held in high esteem within emo music, especially in its fourth wave, where it's regarded as one of its "most crucial documents". [18] On Spin 's 2017 list, it placed #2 out of the emo revival's 30 best albums, only behind Home, Like Noplace Is There by The Hotelier. Writer Briana Younger dubbed it "a masterful journey through the dark" from "a band that believes profoundly in the light at the end of the tunnel". She praised the "remarkable conviction" that they portrayed "effective idealistic angst" with, which "is a rare achievement for past and revival bands alike". [19]
Publication | List | Year | Rank | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
30 Best Emo Revival Albums, Ranked | 2017 | 2 | ||
BrooklynVegan | 100 Best Punk & Emo Albums of the 2010s | 2019 | 47 | |
The Top 15 Emo Albums of the Last 15 Years | 2022 | 8 |
All music is composed by The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "blank #9" | 2:13 |
2. | "Heartbeat in the Brain" | 5:42 |
3. | "Fightboat" | 2:05 |
4. | "Picture of a Tree That Doesn't Look Okay" | 4:01 |
5. | "You Will Never Go to Space" | 2:25 |
6. | "The Layers of Skin We Drag Around" | 1:33 |
7. | "Ultimate Steve" | 4:04 |
8. | "Gig Life" | 2:59 |
9. | "Low Light Assembly" | 3:20 |
10. | "Getting Sodas" | 7:00 |
Total length: | 35:16 |
Chart (2013) | Peak position |
---|---|
U.S. Billboard Vinyl Albums [22] | 3 |
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.
Screamo is an 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.
Drive Like Jehu was an American post-hardcore band from San Diego active from 1990 to 1995 and later from 2014 to 2016. It was formed by rhythm guitarist and vocalist Rick Froberg and lead guitarist John Reis, ex-members of the band Pitchfork, along with bassist Mike Kennedy and drummer Mark Trombino, both from Night Soil Man, after their two bands disbanded in 1990. Drive Like Jehu's music was characterized by passionate singing, unusual song structure, indirect melodic themes, intricate guitar playing, and calculated use of tension, resulting in a distinctive sound amongst other post-hardcore acts and helped to catalyze the evolution of hardcore punk into emo.
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.
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."
The Early November is an American rock band from New Jersey, United States. The group formed in 2001 and signed with Drive-Thru Records in 2002.
Antioch Arrow was an American punk rock band from San Diego, California, that formed in 1992. Most of their discography was released through the San Diego independent label Gravity Records. The label was responsible raising San Diego's profile in the underground music scene of the mid-1990s. The band, breaking up in 1994 and releasing one final studio album posthumously in 1995, are now considered to be one of the most influential bands of the early 1990s that shaped emo and post-hardcore music of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Empire! Empire! was an American emo band from Michigan. It was formed in 2006 originally as a solo project of band member Keith Latinen. The band's music is most often described as emotional indie rock reminiscent of '90s emo bands such as Mineral and American Football. The band's first release was in 2007 with an EP titled When The Sea Became A Giant. The band released a full-length album, What It Takes To Move Forward, in 2009. The band is signed to Count Your Lucky Stars Records and has released albums on a number of other labels, such as strictly no capital letters (UK), Topshelf Records, Stiff Slack (Japan), and Hobbledehoy Record Co (Australia). The band released their second album You Will Eventually Be Forgotten on August 19, 2014. On February 16, 2016, the band announced their final tour before their breakup on their official Facebook page.
I Am Very Far is the sixth album by Okkervil River, released on May 10, 2011. It was produced primarily in Austin, Connecticut and Brooklyn by lead singer Will Sheff with John Congleton and Phil Palazzolo.
The Twenty Thirteen Tour was a concert tour by industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails to support the album Hesitation Marks. It marked the return of the band for live performances after a four-year touring hiatus. It began on July 26, 2013, and ended on August 30, 2014.
The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die is an American rock band formed in Willimantic, Connecticut, in 2009. Following the release of several EPs and splits featuring original lead singer Thomas Diaz, they released their debut LP Whenever, If Ever in 2013 to generally positive reviews. Undergoing a series of roster changes, they proceeded to release a 2014 collaboration with spoken word artist Christopher Zizzamia titled Between Bodies, as well as several full-length records, including Harmlessness in 2015, Always Foreign in 2017, and 2021's Illusory Walls.
The emo revival, or fourth wave emo, was an underground emo movement which began in the late 2000s and flourished until the mid-to-late 2010s. The movement began towards the end of the 2000s third-wave emo, with Pennsylvania-based groups such as Tigers Jaw, Algernon Cadwallader and Snowing eschewing that era's mainstream sensibilities in favor of influence from 1990s Midwest emo. Acts like Touché Amoré, La Dispute and Defeater drew from 1990s emo and especially its heavier counterparts, such as screamo and post-hardcore.
Foxing is an American indie rock band from St. Louis, Missouri. The band has released five studio albums, a live album, an EP and 14 singles.
Snowing is an American Midwest emo band from Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Composed of bassist and vocalist John Galm, guitarists Nate Dionne and Willow Brazuk, and drummer Justin Renninger, the band formed in 2008 and dissolved in 2011. Despite their brief career, they played a key role in the Midwest emo-influenced emo revival movement that flourished during the early-to-late 2010s. Snowing have since reunited for a brief 2019 tour of Japan and three one-off shows: two in 2016 and one in 2022.
Harmlessness is the second studio album by American indie rock band The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. It was announced on August 4, 2015, and was released on September 25. The title of the album is a play on the name of the band's first EP, Formlessness.
Home, Like Noplace Is There is the second studio album by American rock band The Hotelier. Released in 2014, the album received widespread critical acclaim and became recognized as one of the best emo revival albums of all time.
Midwest emo refers to the emo scene and/or subgenre that developed in the 1990s Midwestern United States. Employing unconventional vocal stylings, distinct guitar riffs and arpeggiated melodies, Midwest emo bands shifted away from the genre's hardcore punk roots and drew on indie rock and math rock approaches. According to the author and critic Andy Greenwald, "this was the period when emo earned many, if not all, of the stereotypes that have lasted to this day: boy-driven, glasses-wearing, overly sensitive, overly brainy, chiming-guitar-driven college music." Midwest emo is sometimes used interchangeably with second-wave emo. Although implied by the name, Midwest emo does not solely refer to bands and artists from the Midwestern United States, and the style is played by outfits across the United States and internationally.
Always Foreign is the third studio album by American emo band the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. It was released on September 29, 2017, through Epitaph Records.
Illusory Walls is the fourth studio album by American emo band the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, released October 8, 2021, by Epitaph Records. The name of the album, as well as the lead single "Invading the World of the Guilty as a Spirit of Vengeance", is inspired by the video game series Dark Souls. It is the band's first album since the departure of guitarist-vocalists Tyler Bussey and Dylan Balliett and the death of founding member Tom Diaz. The album was followed by a tour through the fall, including a concert at Brooklyn's Elsewhere Hall which was recorded for their live album Thank You for Being Here.
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