Midwest emo is hands down my favorite music genre. Sitting at the corner of math rock and emo, it has endured for about 25 years in the shadows impacting the minds of terminally-online netizens while having little to no impact in the real world; perhaps this is why it has endured for so long, never doomed to the travails of mainstream attention.
Midwest emo nowadays is divided into two camps, what I will henceforth term the "purist" and the "modern" camp. The purist camp demands all the pockmarks of math rock in most or every work put out by a band in order to earn a band the midwest emo label - accidentals, nonstandard time signatures, weird guitar tunings, syncopation, harmonics, and "twinkly" guitar riffs. These are the guys that are stuck in the 90s and early 2000s and refuse to even acknowledge modern "midwest emo" bands save Tiny Moving Parts; generally they are limited to niche online fora and are disregarded in the larger (albeit small) community. These will be the first to tell you that midwest emo can be made outside the Midwest.
On the other hand, the modern camp is focused more on the "vibe" of being a disenchanted college-aged individual trapped in flyover country, pining for the days of high school drinking beer with the boys and pursuing an unrequited love while enjoying a cigarette on a crisp fall day and coming to the realization that those times are gone and are never coming back. Honestly, I should let the music speak for itself. Here's one of my favorite lines, off of Hot Mulligan's BCKYRD
Rain
You're better off in the clouds as we fade
Barely leaving a semblance of
What we thought it meant to grow up
When things don't get better
No things don't get better, just different
These will be the first to bestow with the midwest emo title four-(augmented) chord virtuoso bands with emo-tinted lyrics and are able to list off the influences on the midwest emo genre without ever having listened to them. The YouTube playlists containing hyper-specific emotional titles would almost all fall into this camp, starting with the venerable "Midwest emo/emo Revival Mixtape" by Zoe Hardee.
Setting these two groups as two extremes on a spectrum, where do I fall? I would say I'm roughly 10% purist and 90% modern - vibe matters a whole lot more than technique in a subculture; even historically we can see this in bands such as Nirvana who favored simple riffs and Bullet for my Valentine whose riffs are considered warmups in the metal community. On the other hand, I can see the importance of not letting in just any band with sad lyrics to the midwest emo club lest the culture end up like mainstream emo, an overpriced fashion statement at every Hot Topic in America. Luckily, the genre has several advantages in this area - singers who should be brought to the Hague for going anywhere near a microphone, instrumentals that sound like they were recorded on a laptop mic in a crowded subway, and lesser-used chords that sound weird to the normal music-listener's ear.
Music critics have developed this incomprehensible mess of emo "waves" that no one can really agree on. The gist is that emo can be divided into 5 waves:
1st wave - Unlistenable trash from 1980s Washington D.C. that music obsessives try to psyop normal people into believing is somehow different from the definitional noise that is early punk. If you're a well-adjusted member of society you have never heard of any bands from this wave; nevertheless, the most often name I see pop up is Rites of Spring
2nd wave - The original midwest emo and its prototypes, localized mainly in 1990s Midwestern USA. This gives us the legends like American Football, The Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring, Cap'n Jazz, Sunny Day Real Estate, and many other bands I will be excoriated for not including
3rd wave - When emo went mainstream and was married with pop punk, this is the Hot Topic/Spencers/Mall emo featuring the bands in every early Gen-Z misfit's soundtrack: My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, Brand New, Paramore, etc. mainly from the 2000s
4th wave - Midwest emo Revival, a bunch of bands that rejected the mainstream excess of the previous wave and "went back to the roots" of 2nd wave, bands like Algernon Cadwallader, Modern Baseball, Mom Jeans, Hot Mulligan, and Moose Blood active in the 2010s to today
5th wave - I, and most other people, can't really define this genre. I personally haven't delved much into it but it's basically midwest emo Revival mixed with bedroom pop and shoegaze, early 2020s to today. I can't really namedrop anyone to be honest
In lieu of introducing yet another classification system that will further muddy the scene, I will try to fit what I previously termed purist and modern into these waves
Purist - 2nd wave + more math rock-y bands from 4th wave like Tiny Moving Parts
Modern - American Football from 2nd wave + all of 4th wave
We now arrive at the meat of this post, which is a list of recommendations for getting started in midwest emo which honestly may just turn into a bunch of roasts. My taste in music is still largely conventional - I need the singer to have a modicum of ability to stay on key, I need the guitar to be interesting enough, etc.
More math rock with lyrics than midwest emo, this album feels like a calm breeze in your face on a fall day. LP2 and LP3 suck, I truly believe it is impossible to recreate the magic of this album. Also has probably the most iconic midwest emo riff in its first track, Never Meant
I usually put this one on for background noise but it doesn't sound awful
One of the more normie-friendly midwest emo revival bands, this album is full of anthems like Midwest Living. Music video for that song is kino too.
A fairly depressing album. I can hear the pain in the singers voice when he sings
So I'll wash
The cigarette smoke out of my clothes
They smell like
Your car did six months ago, back when
You picked up a pack
Because you thought that they made you look cool
One of the classic emo revival albums, I love the riff on you've got the map backwards, matt. The singer sucks and the recording quality is awful but several songs on here are able to overcome that just with the quality of songwriting.
I've spent lots of nights burning the midnight oil to this album. Every song on this album is a banger, but calling Modern Baseball midwest emo is a contentious topic in the community.
Not really any standout tracks in this album, it flows well as a whole regardless. Features the extremely influential song Your Graduation.
Another classic revival album, favorite tracks are c u in da ballpit and dragon ball z budokai tenkaichi 4.
Awash in production quality, song writing, and vocals, this band hits the rare trifecta perhaps because they are barely midwest emo. It truly is a monumental shame that this band fizzed out a couple years back after only releasing this album and an EP (which is also excellent). Every track is an absolute banger.
The aforementioned EP, all 3 songs on this one are excellent
Pop punk anthems on the surface, heartwrenching lyrics if you really listen closely to the music
Excellent album overall, unfortunately I skip equip sunglasses (track 2) on every listen, just a bit too much screaming for me.
A nice album to relax to, really feels like a slightly more forceful fall breeze.
Mike Kinsella, the front man of American Football, created a solo project named Owen after the American Football breakup. With most songs being a sort of math rock-tinged contemplative indie pop, I will forgive anyone who claims this isn't midwest emo, it's barely there but in my defense his entire discography sounds like a continuation of American Football. In any case, this album is truly amazing, super relaxing with incredibly sad lyrics.
Seriously, just search up "midwest emo mixes" on YouTube, do some work and if you notice a track that just especially stands out, listen to the entire album that contains that track. I've been disappointed very few times doing this, mostly due to learning that the band just released one album and dipped 10 years ago never to be heard from again and not really due to the quality of the album itself.
No matter how much an emo fanatic recommends you Tiny Moving Parts, don't listen to them. I spent 2 years forcing myself to like them to try and fit in the community but their combination of terrible songwriting and screeching banshee vocals are impossible for me to penetrate. The guitar noodling is complex and surprisingly listenable but when the singer opens his mouth I just lose any interest I had in the song. Their most famous song, Always Focused, involves one of the most beloved guitar riffs in the community followed by the singer going "IM GETTING HIGHHHHHHHH". In their most recent albums, they've tried going more mainstream which means simplifying the guitar parts leaving only the terrible songwriting and vocals.
Don't get me wrong, I like the music but it's more Dashboard Confessional than American Football. His midwest emo mixes are quite good except for his own songs he includes in them.
The venerable saints of midwest emo from the early and mid-90s do not break nearly enough from their atrocious 1st wave emo roots, most music I've tried from the mid and early 90s is garbage.
Aside from the community drama split squarely down the middle about the members' personalities, I extricate myself from the argument by acknowledging their music just plain sucks.
The midwest emo guitar riffs on YouTube set to random scenes from videos or movies are hilarious, I honestly can't get enough of them but they rarely become full songs.
For live concerts, your best bet is to find basement concerts in your area. I had the privilege of attending one years ago that was only spread by word of mouth, it was truly the most fun I've ever had at a live music venue.
About the only music festival that has midwest emo acts is Fauxchella, held every year in Bowling Green, Ohio but the main focus of that festival is DIY punk with midwest emo being only a peripheral genre. I'm hoping to make my way out there sometime.
I put this last and at the end because I don't see it as that important but I would like to make a few notes on what I've observed of the community.
First off, attire is similar to casual Midwest attire - flannels and jeans which is pretty close to what I wear regardless at least when fall and winter hit. The official beers are Pabst Blue Ribbon and Hamms. The drugs of choice are cigarettes, beer, and marijuana but absolutely nothing harder than that. The average listener is profoundly socially stunted.
Midwest emo is unique in that its a niche genre actually worth listening to. Whatever you do, stay out of the community as you will spend way too much time trying to defend your favorite band as midwest emo while staving off attacks from joyless basement-dwellers that demand that the label be applied only to their obscure mid-90s screamo. Just enjoy the music as it is: kick back, crack open a PBR, light a cigarette, and let the horrible high school memories flow back to you, ever thankful that you are on the other side of that mess but also wistful that you will never experience that mess again.