Break Up Your Band

Rainer Maria - “Half Past April”
Past Worn Searching, 1997

My vinyl copy of the Rainer Maria EP collection and t-shirt came in the mail today, to much fanfare and excitement, and so in honor of that let’s enjoy this gripping track from their fantastic first full-length album, released in 1997. Singer/bassist Caithlin De Marrais and singer/guitarist Kyle Fischer capture the true spirit of what emo was in the days when it was what it should be. Their vocal interplay and sometimes-shy-sometimes-brutal arrangements are cathartic portraits of relationships in various stages of confusion or turmoil. This is an album for moping in bed after a bad fight, for angry rain-drenched walks sorting through a botched conversation, for burning off the effects of those brief terrible flares of fury and passion. We need these albums to get us through the bad times that are pocketed throughout the good times.

Sometimes the pockets of bad times are deeper and longer than we want them to be, sometimes they persist despite our hopes and intentions. But we get out of them. We get out of them partly by remembering, truly believing that it’s the bad times that are the pockets. The good times outweigh.