Braid: Damon Atkinson, Todd Bell, Christopher Broach, Robert Nanna. Additional personnel: J. Robins (percussion). Recorded at Inner Ear, Arlington, Virginia. Braid's existence was fairly brief, but their skilled fusion of tight math rock rhythms and scruffy post-hardcore can be found all over a legion of young emo bands all over the country. Their final album, FRAME AND CANVAS saw them fully flower into a powerhouse band, all yelping youthful enthusiasm, wistful melodies, and crashing stop-start guitars. Despite the punk lineage, Braid is more rambunctious than aggressive, and the songs are for starry-eyed and sentimental young men and women too old for hardcore but too young to quit going to shows. The everyday romance in songs like "A Dozen Roses" and "Collect from Clark Kent" is bittersweet, snatches of memory held in the album title's vessels, and the plainspoken ache in singer Bob Nanna's voice carries the suggestion of regret without leaping into melodrama. People who have forgotten the emotion in emo would do well to listen to FRAME AND CANVAS. Format: Vinyl Genre: Pop
