Spares - S/T EP

!!!COMING FEB. 2025!!!

As the commercially viable version of emo was launching a hostile takeover of the airwaves in the early to mid 2000s, small pockets of true believers continued to ply their own brand of hardcore-indebted, traditionalist emo in DIY spaces, basements, and dive bars. Spares is of the latter persuasion, boasting members who did time in bands with releases on Deep Elm and No Idea, labels who served as pillars of the aforementioned DIY-oriented emo and post-hardcore scenes of the early 21st century. Like several of the members’ previous projects, Spares is wholly uninterested in broad appeal, instead opting to craft angular, thoughtful, and energetic post-hardcore that dually celebrates its influences and has little interest in recreating them.

On their debut EP for Better Days Will Haunt You, Spares have engineered six finely tuned songs that have as much in common with 90s alt rock as they do with Fugazi or Jawbox. Sure, the DC influence is more than a little detectable, with notes of Burning Airlines appearing all over the 23-minute runtime, but sharp-eared listeners will identify just as much Archers Of Loaf here as Nation Of Ulysses. Conversely, the band is unafraid to dip into the mathier reaches of turn-of-the-century post-hardcore and emo, occasionally dabbling in complex tapping riffs that feature more than a passing resemblance to Minus The Bear or Hot Cross. The result is a type of eclecticism that really shouldn’t work, but through the power of sheer songcraft, does. What would in lesser hands be a jumbled mess of incongruous sonic references is instead a harmonious blend of disparate sounds that evokes all of the band’s various influences while sounding like none of them. 

To say that Spares is greater than the sum of its parts would be accurate but not entirely apt. More importantly, Spares is wildly different from its constituent components, landing well clear of genre constraints or easy categorization. Tidy classification of no interest here. Is this post-hardcore? Is it emo? Maybe alt-rock? Call it what you like. As long as it’s this good, who cares? 

FFO: Metz, Pissed Jeans, The Jesus Lizard

Pressing Info: 200 on Translucent Red