Sometimes, when the end comes, it’s right on time. But very rarely do things end when it feels right. Too often the end is a surprise, it catches you off guard, and you’re left in the dust struggling to make sense in your grief. Not as often, but just as difficult, is the end that drags on, milking your patience and sympathy until you’re actually happy the end has come when it finally does arrive. It’s a relief, in those cases.

I received the news of Rainer Maria’s eminent disbanding with a bit of surprise—surprise that they’ve managed to make it this far—but also with a bit of relief. After almost a year of not hearing from the band at all (aside from a quick stopover in Chicago on a brief tour one weekend when I was out of town), they released what I judged to be their weakest album ever. After the strong showing of 2003’s Long Knives Drawn—an album that felt immediately familiar to me the moment I heard it—and the extended hiatus, I was ready to be blown away by their next effort. But the clues were blowing in the wind: after hearing the demos in the summer of 2005, Matt from Polyvinyl told me to be prepared for disappointment. Then the band jumped ship from Polyvinyl altogether, serving their final record as the first release for Grunion Records. And then there was their tour in support of the record: the last time I had seen them perform, it was a bittersweet but triumphant set at the Metro, and it felt like they could go nowhere but up. Yet when they came to Chicago in support of the new record, they instead played back-to-back successive nights at the Beat Kitchen, a tiny hole-in-the-wall venue with capacity at probably 10% that of the Metro, better suited to local up-and-comers, not former emo torchbearers who were shifting gears towards a more mainstream modern rock sound.

Those shows were fun, but I felt like the band had lost some steam. They looked older, finally, after years of reminding me what it’s like to be young. They didn’t sound much older, but they did sound a tad disappointed—with themselves, the venue, the audience, the new material itself, I couldn’t quite tell. While I had seen their audience grow steadily over the years, with younger fans catching up with the bandwagon before it took off again after each new record, this time out I felt like the crowd was only there to experience nostalgia: there didn’t seem to be anyone there who was truly experiencing this band for the first time. We all already knew what to expect, we all had our expectations for the band to fulfill. Perhaps it was too much.

An early-morning slot on Lollapalooza’s Saturday schedule and an opening slot for indie-popsters The Format appeared to be moves calculated to expose the band to new audiences, but to those of us who have been following them for years, it felt like one last attempt to break the band free of its tired emo image. I’m not sitting here crying “Sellout!”, armchair quarterbacking the strategies of three musicians who have been playing the game as long as I’ve been following it, but at some point I was forced to admit that the direction Rainer Maria was headed was not a direction I was interested in following. I thought of it as an amicable parting of ways, a difference in perspective, but the reality was that I had reached a point where the things that Rainer Maria sing about no longer figure centrally into my life. I dare say I had matured beyond the emo of almost a decade ago—it sounds trite to say it like that, but the reality is that it is a difficult thing to face the very real fact that the things that had once meant so much to me were gradually being replaced, one at a time.

This whole piece, plus many more, available only in livingproof #5. Order now.

Issues:
#1: Crisis. [samples]
#2: Rebound. [samples]
#3: Genesis. [samples]
#4: Rehearsal. [samples]
#5: Rapprochement. [samples]
Available for $3 each. Ordering info.
Sanitary and Ship is free.

Reader, I think I might owe you an apology. You probably picked up this zine thinking it was going to be another installment of the Livingproof perzine, a series engages in the dissecting of failures in romance and the place of underground music in such a narrative. This zine doesn’t exactly follow that format. Indeed, upon first read, you may feel like I hoodwinked you into reading a paean to my favorite band, whom you likely don’t care about and may be disinclined entirely to check out after finishing the last page and closing this zine (or throwing it down in disgust partway through).... Read more.

It wasn’t hard to find a place to stay when I first moved to Chicago: my freshman year roommate Brad had an extra bedroom in his Lincoln Park apartment because his roommate had abandoned him for the summer. I could only afford to pay half of my share, but that was better than Brad paying for the whole thing himself. We shook hands and I moved in two days later. I spent that first Chicago summer exploring the city, both formally—I had a job canvassing pedestrians around the city for Greenpeace—and informally, as I learned my way around the CTA, started meeting people, and hung out at bars and rock clubs... Read more.

Semi-Related Links:
Fall of Autumn
Punk Planet
Sanitary and Ship
Splendid
WLUW
Zine World

Sometimes, when the end comes, it’s right on time. But very rarely do things end when it feels right. Too often the end is a surprise, it catches you off guard, and you’re left in the dust struggling to make sense in your grief. Not as often, but just as difficult, is the end that drags on, milking your patience and sympathy until you’re actually happy the end has come when it finally does arrive. It’s a relief, in those cases... Read more.