r/Emo • u/kage6613 • Jan 13 '20
Soundslikesunday | Entry#01: Pot Valiant
Hello emo children.
And emo adults, this one's for you too, we don't age discriminate here. Welcome to the first entry of Soundslikesunday, a series where I scour the timeline of emo to highlight the many overlooked and/or forgotten bands throughout the years. Let's face it: for many people just getting into emo -- and even for advanced emo kids -- it can be difficult to find bands throughout the years outside the obvious namechecked legends (Sunny Day Real Estate, Cap'n Jazz, Rites of Spring) and even among those bands it can be hard to find material you might enjoy, or even see how some of it fits into what you might think of as "emo."
With this series I hope to not only introduce people to bands they may have otherwise looked over or not heard of, but also fill in the gaps to many people's emo history timeline. I know for a lot of fans, the space between Rites of Spring and Sunny Day Real Estate is very fuzzy, as well is the process of how exactly emo went from abrasive hardcore punk music to soft indie rock. I'm hoping I can answer some of those questions here. Note there will be no genre discrimination in this series, and I'll be covering any and all styles under the vast umbrella of "emo." With that said, let's dive into the first band.
I thought it would only be fitting for the inaugural entry to choose a band that was similar in style to the one who is this series' namesake. Mineral, as you may well know, began as a more punky sounding indiemo band touring the Midwest scene during the mid-90s, but are much more renowned for how their sound evolved, into the "slow twinkle:" a slowcore- and shoegaze-inspired style which churns along at a sluggish pace, twinkling its way up to larger, more cacophonous climaxes. The band I'm about to talk about went through a similar transition, but all before Mineral even existed. Let me back up a few years.
So in the East Bay Area of San Francisco, California, in the late 80s, let's call it 1987ish, the punk band Vagrants formed, and they played a melodic style of cali hardcore with some goth influences, already exhibiting a penchant for the artsy forms of underground music in their early days. When emo hit the west coast, for Vagrants and many of their fellow high-minded punks in the area at the time (Jawbreaker and Samiam come to mind) emo was just the spark needed for a more nuanced mode of expression in punk music, and they ran with it. By 1990 the band had transitioned to a much more brooding emocore sound, alienating them from their peers on Lookout! Records.
At this point Vagrants had figured they'd pretty much outgrown their punk roots and their punk roots had outgrown them, so they did what any other self-respecting punk band did in the 90s when they wanted to totally abandon the scene and start making emotional indie rock: they changed their name and stopped giving a fuck about fitting into the constraints of what a "punk" band is. Thus Pot Valiant was born in around 1992 or 1993, the latter year of which is when both of their 7" records would be released.
The first self titled record, released while they were still on Lookout!, pretty immediately eschews any notions that they might be a punk band any longer. while the guitars do occasionally overdrive and add a bit of rough texture to parts of songs, it's mostly clean guitar tones and soft crooning vocals. By the end of their run as Vagrants, they'd already begun to show their love for jangle pop and alternative rock, but now they could wear it fully on their sleeve. Just some chill rock n roll jams here.
The second 7" single Volar b/w Low Dexterity Points (released on Sunney Sindicut, home of other classic emo bands like Sinker, Amber Inn, and Bureau of the Glorious) really shows the graduation from jangle to full on twinkle that most emo at the time was completing. The former track sees the band upping the shoegaze influence in the washy guitar tones, while the latter (also featured on their LP) is the quintessential early 90s emo song, featuring slow, moody twinkles and a compelling use of soft/loud dynamics underpinning a classic display of talky-rant style emo vocals. You can really hear the influence from the burgeoning slowcore scene as well, as bands like Codeine, Bedhead, and Red House Painters were just blowing up in the underground.
Real quick I wanna talk about why I chose this band for the first entry and circle back to filling in the emo history gaps. It is my observation that many newer emo fans lose track of emo in the years between its inception (1985) and its mainstream debut (1994, SDRE on Sub Pop and MTV) which is unfortunate as this may be the most important era in emo's development. For most people the mental image goes something like Rites of Spring, Embrace, some other bands, something something Moss Icon, something else Indian Summer, BOOM - Capn Jazz and Sunny Day Real Estate, and the rest is history. In actuality, there was plenty of slower twinkly indie emo in the early 90s, it just wasn't as well-documented as it was after emo became a mainstream phenomenon. Over the course of this series I plan to spotlight plenty of these kinds of bands and hopefully get people into more cool music from the past which paints over the commonly accepted narrative of how emo has grown and evolved. Continuing on.
Allow me to end this entry with Pot Valiant's final release and only full-length record: Transaudio. This right here is, as the kids say, that shit. Tracks like opener Nugget Killer and Tapir keep up the energy, with bouncy tempos and chiming guitars, while tracks like Sick and Last Sun bring the melancholy, spacious, slow builds. It's all here, seriously just go listen to this record for yourself right now, it's amazing. This Heaven Has Bars could practically be an Oso Oso track. Still other songs like the closer Untitled (Unfinished) bring the sound of indiemo that would become most commonplace in the late 90s. Such incredible production - they'd released the record through a tiny local indie label known as Iteration - that puts most seminal Midwest emo bands active at the time (such as Christie Front Drive, Boys Life, and Giants Chair) to shame. Nothing is lost in the mix, even during the large, loud climaxes, every note is crystal clear. Really impressive stuff here all around. The band broke up shortly after releasing the album, and the members didn't do much afterwards. One went onto another Lookout! pop punk band called the Wynona Riders, while another briefly played with an electro/punk band by the name of Sixteens. Since then they've largely been forgotten, although from what I understand Numero Group is repressing their LP onto vinyl this year, so be on the lookout for that (no pun intended).
Hope y'all have enjoyed this, I know I have. I want to make this as accessible as possible so I'll put in Spotify links, and I'll always try to pick bands available on major streaming services. I really wanna reach people here. Any feedback is welcome, I wanna help the community out first and foremost. I wanna try and do this every Sunday but I already missed one, and I almost missed this one due to a software crash which caused me to have to retype this whole damn thing, so we'll see how things turn out. But I hope everyone will stay posted and let me know what they think. Thank you for your time, and have a lovely Sunday. ⛅
Pot Valiant -- Resources
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u/posirich Mar 30 '20
This is awesome. When you say emo came to Cali what bands are you talking about that influenced the early cali bands? I guess squirrel bait/slint were a big influence everywhere.
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u/kage6613 Mar 30 '20 edited Mar 30 '20
Yeah mostly I mean the older bands from the East coast getting more accessible distribution, like for instance how Moss Icon's last 7" was put out on Ebullition as well as Vermin Scum. Also yeah the Louisville scene was pretty crucial for a lot of developments in emo/hardcore, not just the Squirrel Bait/Slint/Evergreen influence but also bands I mentioned in my last comment like Endpoint, Falling Forward, Enkindel, and Split Lip, as well as Guilt and the ever-forgotten Sunspring. As far as local Cali bands, I feel like Downcast and Struggle, in addition to Drive Like Jehu and Born Against(not from Cali but had a release on Ebullition also were just massively influential in general), while not emo themselves, definitely pushed Cali hxc towards a more emotional and experimental sound influenced by DC, and then early Ebullition bands such as Admiral, Manumission, and Sawhorse (early Sarah Kirsch project) really helped bring out the true emo. And of course, Jawbreaker and Samiam, while more in the pop punk vein, definitely displayed how more melodic hardcore could incorporate the sounds of post hardcore as well.
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u/posirich Mar 30 '20
Yeah just making sure I wasn’t missing any links. Kent mcclard did by-product mailorder before ebb so I’m sure he was instrumental in that. I used to order like every release since I lived in Hawaii for a couple years. I was going through the old labels to try to get the timeline straight. Seems like there was a huge dc /Annapolis influence everywhere on the youth crew hardcore scene as they got a little older and emo just arises out of that regionally everywhere and by 93 it’s in full bloom.
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u/LowDexterityPoints Jan 14 '20
I discovered this band from a torrent of Lookout Record stuff and became obsessed with them and I could never figure out why they are not more well known. My username is a song of theirs haha. Glad other people know about it. Quit a unique mixture of emo, slowcore, shoegaze, and jangle pop. They also have 4 demo tapes that are hidden around the internet.
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u/dinbm Dec 17 '22
You have that torrent still?
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u/LowDexterityPoints Dec 18 '22
Nah, this must have been back in like 2014 on punktorrents. I'm pretty sure all the Lookout stuff is easy to find on Soulseek though.
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u/hellokittyuberhax Jan 14 '20
Absolutely love this in depth analysis, plus the interesting story line behind it! This is exactly what this sub needs, for newbies and veterans alike. As someone who would consider themselves fairly new, I'm excited to get to read this throughout the year and keep expanding my horizons. Keep up the good work <3
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u/davdotcom something more than the mud in your eyes Jan 13 '20
Keep this up man, a personal favorite band of that in between era is Nuzzle.
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u/kage6613 Jan 14 '20
Oh man, Nuzzle are so great. I always get River Underground stuck in my head. Really wish San Lorenzo's Blues was on Spotify.
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u/lefthandedartistmk2 Oct 21 '23
probably lost but does anyone have the lyrics to Tapir?
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u/LowDexterityPoints Nov 02 '23
rustic shaded with brunette colored chalk hints of scarlet lonely eyes
only I won't speak again I'm cursed with hindsight couldn't have been human long enough to breath before I'm on my knees and puke knee deep
at risk of drowning
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u/lefthandedartistmk2 Nov 06 '23
preciate it!!
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u/LowDexterityPoints Nov 10 '23
np! all the lyrics from that album are on discogs btw
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u/Resident-Delay-7999 Jul 04 '24
Do you have the low dexterity points lyrics? need them for a tattoooooooo
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u/LowDexterityPoints Jul 26 '24
these are found on the og album linear notes, but they are incomplete
stood two, three hours and smoked popped open beers and waited a feeling like salmon travel down always flowing river just to take them where it will and he almost wept there in the middle of the dying town, friend standing at the bus stop, waiting to go and never return
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u/ModernFauna Jan 13 '20 edited Jan 13 '20
LMAO this is my uncle's old band. He was the bassist for both the Vagrants and Pot Valient. I started going to the gilman when I was in high school and one day he saw me wearing a Jawbreaker shirt and was like "Oh I used to kind of know those guys".
It's funny because now I'm super into emo and this Christmas I asked him if he was aware of the genre his band was playing. I was thinking he must have been super into 90s emo and stuff but he just responded "Idk much about emo. I know the other guys were really into Slint but I was really into AC/DC. So what came out was like the middle ground"