The Best Midwest Emo Albums of the 2010s

An album that opens with a song titled 'An Introduction to the Album' has jokes; almost nothing after it is funny. The Hotelier's Tiny Engines breakthrough — Worcester, Massachusetts, for the geography police — turned grief into the revival's biggest singalongs. 'Your Deep Rest' handles a friend's suicide with a melody chipper enough to sneak onto party playlists, which is the entire devastating trick. The revival's consensus peak.

Seven-ish members, depending on the week — TWIABP's lineup out of Willimantic, Connecticut was more commune than band, and the Topshelf debut sounds like it: guitars, keys, and voices stacked until the songs crest like weather. Closer 'Getting Sodas' ends the album at full congregation, everybody shouting the same line about living and dying like a group vow. Post-rock scale applied to diary material.

Two college students in Philadelphia wrote these songs between classes, and Run for Cover watched the thing reach No. 97 on the Billboard 200. 'Your Graduation' is the anthem — a drum-thump verse of moping that detonates into the decade's most shouted-back chorus. Wry, phone-obsessed, allergic to poetry: Modern Baseball made under-feeling into its own kind of feeling.

St. Louis actually is the Midwest, so Foxing carries the flag on a technicality — first on Count Your Lucky Stars in 2013, then remastered by Triple Crown a year later once the internet caught up. 'Rory' remains the moment: trumpet and tremolo building under Conor Murphy's plea until his voice rips open on the title name. Nobody in the scene has topped that scream since.

Self-released on their own Hot Green Records, because of course the twinkliest band in Philadelphia didn't wait for permission. Algernon Cadwallader's second album opens with 'Springing Leaks' — hammer-on guitar figures tumbling over each other while Peter Helmis yelps from somewhere in the next room. Guitarist Joe Reinhart went on to co-run Headroom Studios and produce Modern Baseball; the family tree grows straight out of this record.

Kids from the Lehigh Valley who formed out of Street Smart Cyclist's breakup, made one LP, and quit within a year — the Count Your Lucky Stars and Square of Opposition co-release became a relic the moment Snowing did. Opener 'I Think We're in Minsk' is basement emo in its natural state: guitars sprinting ahead of the drums, John Galm shouting like the take won't happen twice. It didn't need to.

Evan Weiss drove out to Ed Rose's Black Lodge studio in Eudora, Kansas — pilgrimage-grade production credentials for a No Sleep record. Proper is the revival's craftsman album: 'Midnight: Carroll Street' walks a clean guitar line through verse after verse of Chicago-transplant detail before letting the band lean in. The one-man-scene guy proving the songs held up without the mythology.

Ten songs, about nineteen minutes: Joyce Manor's Epitaph debut treats brevity as a dare. Torrance, California is nobody's Midwest — border case, flagged — but 'Falling in Love Again' bends power-pop chords through emo phrasing in a way every twinkle band envied, and it's over in under two and a half minutes. The rare scene album your non-scene friends kept.

Actual Michiganders at last: Keith and Cathy Latinen ran the band — and the label, since Count Your Lucky Stars was theirs — from Fenton, Michigan. Opener 'Ribbon' does the house style in one song, guitars pinging politely while Keith's thin, unguarded voice reads what might as well be a letter. The revival's connective tissue: half this list toured, released, or existed because the Latinens said yes.

A family band from Benson, Minnesota — brothers Billy and Matt Chevalier plus their cousin Dylan Mattheisen — playing tapping riffs like farm kids who found a Kinsella tab book. 'Always Focused' led the Triple Crown release as its first single and still explains the whole band: fretboard acrobatics grinning through lyrics about barely coping. Midwest emo as recreation and therapy at the same time.

The revival was a small town: Evan Weiss of Into It. Over It. produced this one, turning Orlando's You Blew It! from tape-hiss hopefuls into Topshelf's tightest roster entry. 'Match & Tinder' opens the album mid-argument, strummed urgency under a voice that keeps almost cracking — the record's whole emotional register in three minutes. The most underrated pick here; vote accordingly and prove it.

Horns in emo usually mean ska damage; Prawn's Topshelf record uses trumpet as weather instead, drifting in over the New Jersey band's long, tidal builds. 'First As Tragedy, Second As Farce' is the peak, swelling and receding twice over without ever landing a proper chorus — titled like a grad seminar, played like a eulogy. The revival's best headphone album.

Nothing on Soft Speak Records ever matched its own title better: Philadelphia's Marietta recorded the twinkle daydream and the hangover in the same take. 'Cinco De Mayo Shit Show' became the scene's shorthand — noodling that stumbles on purpose, vocals shrugged past the mic, a song that sounds like remembering a party from the porch afterward. Sloppy as an aesthetic position, and it holds.

An emo band from Nashville on a Michigan label — Count Your Lucky Stars again — Free Throw made the genre's most literal drinking-and-feelings record. 'Two Beers In' says it right on the label: Cory Castro's voice slides from mutter to bleat as the riffs tighten around him, the exact sound of a group chat spiraling at 1 a.m. The band got sharper later; this one stays the most loved.

Closing the decade at hardcore tempo, D.C. duo Origami Angel — Ryland Heagy on everything stringed, Pat Doherty on drums — made their Chatterbot debut a concept record about an imaginary refuge town. '24 Hr Drive-Thru' packs riff-switches like a medley and still lands a chorus, which is why it became Gen Z's on-ramp to everything else on this list. The revival handing its keys to the next scene.