Erik Discovers Emo

A couple of weeks ago I went to Bumbershoot with some friends to see Dave Eggers and Sarah Vowell perform some spoken word to benefit a great local charity that will help underprivileged kids learn about writing. I knew Eggers only by reputation, and I'm basically in love with Sarah Vowell's brain, so I was pretty excited to get to see them both in one show. Lucky for me, there was an ultra-special surprise on the docket that night in the form of "Death Cab for Cutie," a local emo band who have garnered an enormous amount of press in the last year, and just released their first major label CD. I had never heard Death Cab for Cutie's music, but I figured that since I had heard of them and since they were local, they were probably pretty good.

Holy shit, emo music is boring as hell. Death Cab for Cutie is terrible. At the end of the (otherwise excellent) program they did a cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" that achieved what I had imagined was impossible. They actually made "Hungry Like the Wolf" boring. I really don't know anything about emo, but from what I learned at the concert, I'm ready to say that as a rule it's the easiest musical genre to fall asleep to.

But I'm not ready to write emo off, yet. A friend we'll call "Dimsdale" sent me the following link, and I must say you all owe it to yourselves to listen to the song "Weis & Hickman."

Don't say I never gave you anything.