ethel meserve

today i'm going to tell you about one of my favourite bands. their name is ethel meserve and they're not terribly well known at all. and that's such a shame, because i think that they're one of the best things to have happened to emo since sunny day real estate.

the good thing is that at least some people during the nineties recognised this. a few musical spatterings on such wonderful collections of music as "the postmarked stamp" series and crank!'s fantastic "(don't forget to) breathe" compilation, ethel meserve always remained enigmatic with brash jangly guitars and composed shouting, almost daring the listener to find out more. and if you hadn't taken them up on it, well shame on you.

unfortunately i did it all the wrong way around. ethel's "the milton abandonment" had enjoyed heavy rotation in my cd player before i knew these comps existed. my story is very romantic. i fell in love, it's that simple. head over heels. and truth is, if you listen to the opening to "east coker", you'll know exactly what i'm talking about. the most polite cello you've ever heard humming the same pretty tune over and over again, gradually joined by well-meaning but dissonant guitar jangles. the beautiful thing about this that they seem to carve their own little corner of music that shouldn't make sense but does. getting into the swing of things, we become aquainted with the nice young man who sings to us. honestly and without trite we're introduced to how it feels to come back home and have nothing waiting for you except shadows. poetically shown how sad serious things can be.

and suitably, where these guys hit home resides in the second last track on the ep, ina. any afficendo of spokenwordcore (as i politely dub it) would agree, a disjointed riff, some bitter overdrive and this alienated but annoyed young man telling us about his deadbeat of an alcoholic father, lamenting in lost birthdays and ruined childhoods. as the story unfolds and the tragedy increases, so does the musical panic. special shout outs must go to the bassist and his tocsin; the bass guitar becomes a warning to us: this next crecendo is going to blow you away.

and of course since the milton abandonment seems to be over far too quickly, tree records recently did us the pleasure of releasing all those loose odds and ends (including those blissful two tracks on the abovementioned compilations) onto one handy cd called "spelling the names". although we have the same band here, this cd is ironically as disjointedly arranged as their music, never meshing as a cohesive whole as milton did. almost serving as a warm-up to their opus, yet eclipsing the best efforts of oh so many other bands.

bluntly, if you like mid nineties emo at all, you need these guys. you need find out what it is to fall in love with this beautiful, awkward waltz of a band.



"a town so small you can wave on every block someone knows your name"
mp3s of note: east coker, ina, west decatur
(as well as belated blues, onward foster and calba's last on spelling the names if you can)
ethel meserve - the milton abandonment