i think it was after hearing a fourth or fifth pop-punk song where a whiny vocalist complains about feeling old at 22 that i jumped ship on emo, probably less than a year after i hopped on board with the genre in the first place. it wasn’t so much the fact that i was several year older than 22 at the time that made me question my decision to finally find out what in god’s name ‘the world is a beautiful place & i am no longer afraid to die’ is beyond an aid to music journalists desperate to meet their word count—i think it had more to do with the realization that for a genre with such a broad fanbase, it doesn’t have a whole lot of variability.
i realize now that this opinion only takes into account one of several waves of emo which i’m not particularly interested in learning about, nor am i confident i’ll be able to find someone who can explain them all to me without them getting too heated for reasons i don’t entirely understand. but it does touch on something i’ve been thinking about regarding my general disinterest in artists that keep the discourse machine running despite my attraction to the genres these artists work within. as tentpoles of these types of music, i suppose, they wind up inspiring the next wave of artists within that genre to copy them, only making me more interested in seeking out an alternative to that homogenized sound.
at the tail end of being peripheral vision–pilled i was subjected to the label tiny engines through their publicist, who kept me well nourished on album advances during what, in my opinion, was the label’s peak moment. it was 2019, and every release they sent my way managed to skirt the ‘emo’ tag they seemingly built their reputation on over the years while still maintaining enough of that influence to get hit with the ‘-adjacent’ suffix in writeups. this was the same year my other favorite quote-unquote emo label went off the deep end with signings that totally derailed the one-note emotional palette they’d cultivated for nearly a decade. i guess i wasn’t the only one getting over emo at the time.
and then, of course, tiny engines collapsed (roughly a week after the t-shirt i ordered with their logo on it arrived at my apartment, incidentally). i won’t get into details here, since i’m probably not qualified to do so, nor do i think it’s particularly relevant to this piece, but i will say that to this day i’ve never seen another wikipedia page this dominated by a ‘controversy’ section. it sucked for the artists awaiting payment. it sucked for the artists on the verge of releasing music through the label, who in many cases spent well over a year shopping for a new label home for their music. it sucked for fans who maybe realized that the indie labels they idolize and perhaps even write silly little newsletters about aren’t nearly as antithetical to the evils of the industry as they appear.
but it also made me realize how valuable this type of label was as a curatorial presence, especially in an era of constant turnover at music websites which no longer feel like reliable sources for recommendations when their head editors get swapped out every year or so. it felt like the label did a good job of highlighting emo music for people who don’t like emo music—for people who get bored when they catch too big a whiff of genre. it was the same feeling of being at sea i remember experiencing during the early-’00s era of file-sharing blogs being shut down one-by-one leaving us to figure out alternative methods of keeping up with new music.
i don’t think i would’ve pursued tiny engines for this project if it weren’t for all of the course corrections the label’s undergone in recent years which i’m about to list off in fairly quick succession because, again, not really the point: first off, all of the artists who were owed money have been fully compensated. secondly, most artists on the roster have resurfaced to release music on a new label—which, in almost every case, made you go ‘yeah, ok, wow, that’s a good fit, that totally makes sense, good for them.’
and finally, as of a month or so ago, tiny engines suddenly reopened shop (i swear i had no idea that would happen when i started this project) with the controversial (is that the right word?) figure responsible for the bulk of the label’s wiki article word count ousted from the letterhead. there’s even a new single from a new signee that signals TE picking up approximately where they left off.
and i’m excited for the future of the label. and i’m excited for the past of the label, which i feel like i’ve only scratched the surface of. and if there’s any question of whether it’s in bad taste to wear the tiny engines t-shirt i bought with the old archimboldi-esque logo on it, well, it probably doesn’t matter now because i used it to rest my box fan on for the past four years and it got so destroyed that it’s now found a new life as a rag under my kitchen sink.
tiny engines canon
mannequin pussy, romantic (2016) feel like since patience was such an emotional capital-M moment i forget that (a) romantic is occasionally kind of fun (see: ‘emotional high’), (b) the title track and ‘pledge’ are every bit as cathartic in their unbridled noise as ‘drunk ii’ was in its unexpected (relative) refinement, and (c) the album is only as long as three ‘drunk ii’s. seems like a suspiciously good onboarding record for folks who aren’t into harsh music and i’m not entirely sure how they achieved that.
nanami ozone, NO (2019) been listening to this album presumably named after a michael shannon bit for four years and i still can’t tell what band it sounds exactly like (can someone help…..also please don’t just say kings of leon) but i know it’s a band i like a lot. album really kicks into gear with ‘art of sleeping in,’ which always makes me realize that this has been a psych-rock record all along, while tracks like ‘erase time’ bring it back down to equally competent slowcore territory. big moment for emo-adjacency visibility when taylor snatched this album cover template up for her ‘ME!’ single.
club night, what life (2019) i don’t think any of us has heard a polyphonic spree song in 20 years but rather than revisiting whatever that was i’d much rather hear those vox imposed over peripheral midwestern-emo noodling with a slightly chaotic structure and vaguely menacing backdrop. there’s nothing even explicitly weird about this album, it’s just uncanny enough that it breaks my silly little music journalist brain even before it wilds out in the second half.
truth club, not an exit (2019) pt. 2 of TE ‘club’ band doing genres poorly in a way that rules on an LP slapped with a weirdly metal album cover and an insanely good closing track released in 2019. will never not get truth club mixed up with club night for this reason but not an exit is a pretty distinctly not-emo release instead gravitating toward some damaged take on post-punk. more stuff should be cool and weird, i think.
strange ranger, remembering the rockets (2019) breezy pop-rock album unexpectedly laying the groundwork for some of the most corrosive discourse i have ever seen a band this small generate regarding everything they would release over the next four years. fairly all-over-the-place in an admirable way over the course of 14 tracks leaning into various harmless and dated alt-rock corners—pretty sure ‘ranch style home’ made me revisit the dandy warhols’ post-come down discography with a more optimistic perspective when i first heard it.
on the to-listen-to pile
adult mom felt like stevie earned a shout here in being the artist responsible for setting everything straight with the label, but it turns out this track completely whips. feels like an apt theme song for the label as well.
alien boy you know that feeling you get when listening to shoegaze where you feel like you could kool-aid-man through a brick wall? alien boy are great at making the case that an emo band can give you that feeling too.
annabel emo black keys (idk, they’re a rock duo from akron). big ‘anthemic’ guy when it comes to emo in the same way i am a big ‘-adjacent’ guy—can’t stand when people use these terms but i absolutely know what they’re referring to and they’re things i appreciate about the music. the music writer’s dilemma.
cayetana turns out the songs i’ve always loved by cayetana are either (a) on a 7-inch for asian man or (b) actually by camp cope, but still riding for ‘hot dad calendar’ (both song and general concept).
illuminati hotties from what i can tell IH and adult mom are the artists who put tiny engines on the map outside of the sphere of emo, but similar to adult mom i accidentally managed to get attached to one of their tracks for the first time during this project—similar type of twee-pop that’s far from that genre’s cloying conventions. pretty big year for sarah, but not quite as big as the year prior when she assistant-engineered a logic album and assistant-mixed the slowdive self-titled.
it looks sad. genuinely shook learning that this band released more music than just that one two-track EP, let alone a full album that seems like it’s every bit as good as those two songs. like what is the deal.
jouska truth club/club night–esque proggy post-punk (?) stuff with a dark album cover mixed with nanami ozone’s thing where the vocals make me think of kings of leon a tiny bit. it’s probably a bad idea to explore the singer’s cloud rap project, right?
oceanator oceanator is the first band i remember resurfacing on another label after tiny engines disappeared, so i def would’ve had things i never said on this list had it come out in time. i guess this EP seems to be basically the same thing, so.
spirit of the beehive i’ve spent a very stressful four years or so knowing that i should absolutely love this band and yet. funny how after their last two albums fell flat for me and i finally gave up trying to like them i became obsessed with this track.
sweet john bloom power-pop-punk half japanese, hell yeah.
yeesh always surprised to remember this LP came out on TE but then again i can’t think of a more reasonable scene for yeesh to have fit in with. guess there’s some shades of midwest emo in here but it’s also getting harder not to focus on the stuck-y post-punk elements.
surprise!
little big league only thing more unexpected than stumbling upon michelle zauner’s old band’s split with ovlov is hearing that band play this weird podcast-jingle-core which i noticed a handful of tiny engine’s other early releases flirted with.
springtime whoops not the springtime i know.
bewilder i am so stoked on tiny engines: beta version based on this first single—it’s like a midwest emo carissa’s wierd with the drumming from ‘truckers atlas.’