Editor’s Note: Our new, recurring “Albumism Recommends” series aims to shine a bright light on our favorite albums of the past, with an emphasis on the records that arguably never achieved the widespread or sustained attention they rightfully deserve. As you’ll see below, unlike our longer-form feature articles, we’ve intentionally kept the accompanying commentary to a minimum, so as to allow the great music to speak for itself.
We hope that you enjoy discovering (or rediscovering) these musical treasures and if you like what you hear, we encourage you to spread the good word far and wide so that others can experience these under-the-radar classics as well.
ARTIST: Rainer Maria
TITLE: Past Worn Searching
RELEASED: December 2, 1997
LABEL: Polyvinyl
NOTABLE TRACKS: “Half Past April” | “New York 1955” | “Tinfoil”
Before there was cheesy MySpace/Fall Out Boy “emo,” there was moody, poetic, hardcore-adjacent emo, and Wisconsin (later Brooklyn)-based Rainer Maria were one of those pioneering emo bands in the ’90s (though emo’s roots can actually be traced to Rites of Spring in the ’80s). Named after Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the band has continued to release albums well into the millennium, but their debut crystallizes a certain late ’90s mood and milieu that included grungy house shows and kids in thrift-store pants and Sauconys.
The album’s opener, “Tinfoil”—beginning with a loud, clamoring “Goddammit!”—is wrenching in the best possible way, with dual/dueling harmonies culminating in Caithlin De Marrais and Kaia Fischer beseeching someone to “call an ambulance” as they break each other’s hearts. The rest of the album alternates between whispery ethereality, groping interludes, and exploding, passionate crescendos in this very vein.
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