New ‘Emo Revival’ book coming from BrooklynVegan’s Andrew Sacher

Hey BrooklynVegan readers, it’s me Andrew Sacher. You may know me from the tens of thousands of articles I’ve written for BV over the past 15 years, and now I’m coming out with my first book, Emo Revival: Community, DIY, and Rebirth in Post-Hardcore and Emo (2008-2018), on September 8 via Clash Books (distributed by Consortium). I’m proudly revealing the book’s cover right here on BrooklynVegan right now, and letting you know that pre-orders are live! If you’ve liked any or all of many longform articles about emo here on BV over the years, you might like this book too, and I really appreciate any and all support. If you’re interested, pre-order it now.

The list of bands that I interviewed for this book includes but is not limited to Algernon Cadwallader, Title Fight, Snowing, Modern Baseball, The Hotelier, Foxing, Joyce Manor, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Touché Amoré, Citizen, Turnover, Into It. Over It., Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate), Tigers Jaw, Hop Along, Balance and Composure, The Menzingers, Pianos Become the Teeth, You Blew It!, Basement, Pity Sex, Joie de Vivre, Annabel, Native, Glocca Morra, Slingshot Dakota, Cayetana, Chumped, PUP, The Sidekicks, and Prawn, as well as some of the veteran bands who made comebacks during the “emo revival” era like American Football, Braid, Mineral, Thursday, and Circa Survive.

I technically started writing the book in May of 2023, but it’s really something I’ve spent most of my adult life preparing for, ever since I started covering the rises of almost all the bands in this book on BrooklynVegan back in 2011. These bands came up in the late 2000s and early 2010s–after the mainstream emo boom died down–with a more indie approach to emo and post-hardcore, and they built a DIY community that’s most popularly referred to as “emo revival.” Maybe you know some of these bands as “new wave of post-hardcore” or “fourth wave emo,” but regardless of what you call them, just about everyone I talked to for this book agrees that what most ties all of these bands together is the community that they built together. The book touches on several key albums and tours from throughout the 2008-2018 period, and as much as it’s about a whole lot of bands, it’s really about one movement and one community. In my humble opinion, it’s about one of the most important movements in rock music of the 21st century so far.

The photo on the cover by the great Dan Bassini is of Snowing’s 2011 farewell show at the First Unitarian Church in Philly. It captures a moment when the entire “emo revival” scene was still under the radar but about to boil over into something much, much bigger, and I think it’s representative of what made this all so special.

Here’s the book’s official synopsis:

The story of the reinvention of punk rock’s most misunderstood subgenre, featuring Algernon Cadwallader, Title Fight, Modern Baseball, and the dozens of other bands who saved emo from implosion.

Emo didn’t start with the rise of bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and it didn’t end with their turn-of-the-2010s drop-offs either. When emo faded from the mainstream, major players in the music industry were ready to move on. The genre looked like a fad that was passing. But it didn’t die; it went back to the basements and VFW halls that it began in decades earlier, fueled by a new crop of bands who kept emo alive when no one else would.

Andrew Sacher explores why and how these bands turned the fourth wave of emo into one of the most impactful underground rock movements of its time. Informed by over 80 original interviews, Sacher offers a deep dive into the generation of bands that restored the musical values and DIY ethos of emo’s past in order to shape its future.

Emo Revival is a story about countless great records and powerful live shows, but even more so than that, it’s a story about community. None of this would have happened without an influx of likeminded bands, record labels, show bookers, and fans who reinforced that “DIY” is really about doing it together.

Pre-order Emo Revival here, stay tuned for TBA live book events, and follow me on social media for more updates.

You can also pre-order the book from the BrooklynVegan Shop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookShop, and IndiePubs.