emiLy - Finer Time 7"

emiLy once self-described as:

"We play music. It sounds kind of like what might result if you threw Jawbreaker, DC stuff, Rites of Spring, American Music Club, and an inept love of jazz in a blender and pureed the mixture into a fine mush. We are three fine young men who own and operate musical instruments and occasionally stir fry. Joe plays guitar and sings, Mike plays bass, and Doug plays drums. Buster plays his face, but he doesn't actually have anything to do with the band, seeing as he is a cartoon."

A fairly apt assessment, or at least as close as one could probably hope to get. Complete with an Animaniacs reference and everything!

Finer Time is the little piece of wax that propelled emiLy into international superstardom, or something like that. It was reviewed quite favorably at the time by HeartattaCk (UPDATE: review included below) and others, which is probably why you'll occasionally find rips of it floating around punkrock message boards.

"Great musicianship and a tight production make this an awe-inspiring record. Like Hoover they took the Fugazi sound and created something new. But unlike Hoover they sound fresh and raw and stir something in me that I can't quite describe. Listening to these 3 songs is better than dancing the one-handed mambo, it's better than garlic-pepper-tofu flavored edible underwear. -MH" from HeartattaCk #2

And now some thoughts from Doug:

"Better than tofu flavored edible underwear" -- that's the phrase that always stuck with me. I have no idea what the hell it has to do with the music, but we got a lot of mail as a result. For a year or so, Joe and I amassed a large pile of records through trades alone. It also led to us being interviewed in a Slovenian zine called Pssst and eventually getting a CD put out in France by a new label called SanJam.

Domestically, the record helped us get shows in Chicago, Galesburg, IL, Columbus, OH, and Tampa, FL. The Galesburg show led to the recording of our second tape, Engineering Means I Like You.

Finer Time was recorded at Miami Street Studio in South Bend. The cover art is by Lael Tyler, who was working as a designer out in Portland, OR last I heard from him. The drawing is of what was his front porch at the time, at 226 St. Peter Street, a house most famous for being the place where Unwound and Crain played. The "e" in the light bulb was also used for the labels on the record itself, and became a logo of sorts for emiLy. The covers were printed by Punks With Presses.

Side 1 has "Cartoon Sex" and "Finer Time", while side 2 features "Frialator." The latter was named after a deep-frying machine which was actually spelled Fry-O-Lator, and for some reason the song later became known as "5(frialator)." I'm pretty sure we also recorded a song called "Fortune 13" in the same session, but it only turned up on a demo that we sent to places in hopes of getting shows.

My parents have a copy of this (and Tinkertoy, our second 7-inch) hanging on the wall in their house, along with family pictures and diplomas.

listen/download:



see also:
emiLy on MySpace
emiLy on last.fm