June 14

I've talked about emo as a misused appelation before, but I just realized that I have yet to demonstrate what emo is. Today, I can rectify that, thanks to Bob Nanna. After the dissolution of his first band Braid (which fans and critics would either call emo or post-hardcore), he formed Hey Mercedes, which comfortably wore the emo badge on the arm where its sleeve was supposed to be. It's all there: the soft-loud-soft rocksong structure, the sentence fragment songtitles, the replacement of cockrock bravado with confessional yearning...

It's not hard to see what some people don't like about emo: confessional intelligence in the wrong hands sounds like a bunch of whiny smartasses. Which is probably why emo resonates so well with teenagers, then tends to get outgrown fast.
Bob Nanna moved on, too. He now plays in the band Certain People I Know, and has his solo project The City on Film. Plus, he's got a day job, at Threadless.com. Among other duties, he's written songs about several of the ubiquitous T-Shirt. Over 150 of them. Each song is linked under its inspiring t-shirt, but there's links to all the songs on his profile page.
Meanwhile, here's footage from the first public performance of Certain People I Know...