Monument

Goes Canoeing

Lovers of emo have it rough. Before Dashboard Confessional was a household name, emo was a strange and exciting offshoot of hardcore, much louder and stranger than the running joke we know today. Anyone with a wrinkly Promise Ring T-shirt molding in their closet’s corner has attempted to explain this distinction to a room of blank stares. Washington, D.C.'s Monument have definitely had this discussion before, and what better way to show people what emo was than by recreating it note for note on their debut LP, Goes Canoeing.

The beautiful arpeggios on “Small Mouth, Big Pizza” hark back to whiny oddballs Mineral. “Driftwood” couples angular guitar riffs with scratchy, melodic howls, a concoction that sounds so much like Braid it’s creepy. There’s some cliché lyricism on Goes Canoeing—see “No Sleep, All Play”—and songs like “Glass House” are second rate compared to the source material. But Monument’s youthful energy hides most of the album’s gaffes. Goes Canoeing is a fun listen crafted by a group of dudes that know their roots, and hopefully their sense of history will inspire a new generation to give a misunderstood genre a chance.

Tiny Engines http://www.tinyengines.net

“Roots Run Deep”