w/Recover, Moneen, Limbeck
Tues July 13, Graceland, 8 pm, $12 adv.
Braid were always the great emo pretenders: their songs obsessed with creating a façade, their overdramatic scenes too scripted to be real. They made albums that were filled with actors and cameras--fake scenery used as real scenery for the sake of embarrassing depth--in the made-for-basement version of someone else's life. There was a cinematic song with lyrics that fit ("I'll be the camera if you'll be the star") at every turn in the Braid catalog, which was incredibly unfortunate seeing that there was a time, honest to god, when you could reasonably argue that most emo bands didn't really sing songs about what could've, should've, happened if only they weren't standing there in the rain. All the mounting critics who wanted to point at a tuneful punk band and draw any number of rolled-eye conclusions about what us kids from the 'burbs or those in their first year at a well-to-do college were buying into suddenly had an unfair advantage: Braid completely fucked the curve.
And now they've come back.
In a recent issue of Alternative Press--and only after a few cheery paragraphs in which the article's author, Kyle Ryan, insists that Braid became "far more popular after they threw in the towel"--lead singer Bob Nanna suspiciously denies that they've had an influence on anyone at all. So why is it that we are being subjected to a reunion tour after so many years of inactivity? Because that's exactly how convincing Braid have become. As a fellow music journalist who has spent his time writing about the sort of big-in-the-mall punk bands that came as a reaction to the late-'90s emo boom, I always thought Braid the least likely of the old boys' club to buy into a posthumous victory lap. There's part of you that even wants to believe Nanna when he undermines his band's importance--if they were so renowned, Hey Mercedes (essentially Braid without second guitarist and aspiring frontman Christopher Broach) wouldn't have had to ask fans for online donations earlier in the year so that they could fix their van. But when a rock reunion isn't about ego, it's usually about dinero and, let's face it, that's not going to be made hand over fist here. The kids in the chatrooms have even begun to claim that Braid are already arguing onstage.
Even without good reason, the show must go on: In a way, three of the four bands on this bill (support comes from the hard-partying Recover and Vagrant Records underdogs Moneen) serve as a reminder of how little things have actually changed. (That Moneen's overlooked 2003 Vagrant debut album was titled Are We Really Happy with Who We Are Right Now? seems pretty telling, don't you think?) Sort through your record collection a little and it's clear that emo has always been about wallowing in a moment that already passed, thus the Braid reunion seems pretty much like the life equivalent to pining over a brief summer fling that wasn't that big of a deal in the first place. That's what Braid made a semi-career out of five years ago--you know, before playing in an emotional punk band could amount to an actual career--and even if a handful of indie rock bands have made unprecedented runs at the reunion in recent months, corralling those still sentimental enough to care on a Tuesday night at Graceland shouldn't amount to much in terms of career-redemption.
So we're just going to have to pretend for a while. If the first act for Braid saw them turning in a three-star performance as an earnest punk band (which, depending on what end of this argument you stand, can make the sole listenable spot in their catalog, 1998's Frame & Canvas, seem incredibly dishonest) they may fare better with a second act that finds them taking the stage as an influential band if only in their own minds. But I wouldn't know, I'm just a writer who is slipping into a cranky adulthood. The problem I've always had with actors is how they take their final bow: Some do so with dignity, some do so with embarrassment, and others still just encore with a song called "Hugs from Boys."
But it's man time, now--how have you grown?
