Standards is Evan Weiss’s first Into It. Over It. album since he turned 30, the kind of milestone that throws some songwriters into crisis. It seems like it would be an especially hard transition for a guy whose very band name telegraphs his obsession with ephemerality, but to judge by these songs he’s doing fine, more or less. It’s everybody else around him that isn’t doing so well. For instance, "Open Casket," a eulogy to youth, begins the record with a visit to some of Weiss’s old hometown friends and finds them much worse for the wear. "They wake up still uninspired with no regrets," Weiss sings, "Hung over and divorced/ They torch their twenties like it’s kerosene."
Weiss has long been the spokesman for the emo revival, usually the most eloquent guy quoted in the "Emo’s Back" trend pieces that circulated a couple years ago. But now that the emo revival is looking less like a niche scene and more like the shape of alternative to come, Weiss is settling into a new role as the scene’s elder statesmen. He’s mellowed with age, and compared to the form-defying bands that have emerged since he first made his mark with the song-a-week project 52 Weeks in the late ’00s, he sounds downright classicist. Weiss can’t match the genre-dwarfing ambition of The World is a Beautiful Place..., the hyperventilating intensity of the Hotelier, or the youthful insouciance of Modern Baseball, and so he doesn’t try. Instead on Standards he banks on subtlety—which, really, is as good a way as any to distinguish yourself in a scene defined by overstatement.
As usual, Weiss doesn’t disguise his influences. The album’s pattering tones and corked time signatures reaffirm that this is someone who’s been in a band with Mike Kinsella and could probably identify most of Polyvinyl’s classic releases by catalogue number. The influence that looms largest this time, however, is Death Cab For Cutie, and not just because Weiss leans more than ever on Ben Gibbard’s tender vocal affectations. As the band’s tightest, most approachable album, Standards feels like Into It. Over It.’s answer to Transatlanticism, a record that, while not quite a commercial crossover, feels like a trial run for one. Standards even has a mid-album slow-burner unabashedly modeled after Transatlanticism’s title track: "Your Lasting Image," the achiest of Weiss's many ruminations about growing apart from the people he loved. When Weiss reaches the song’s climactic refrain "I have the faintest recollection of us" in concert you can almost imagine fans reflexively mouthing along "I need you so much closer now" by mistake.
After penning these songs in a cabin in Vermont, the previously Pro Tools-minded Weiss recorded Standards at analogue-enthusiast John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone Studio in San Francisco. Vanderslice’s production doesn’t have the crunch of some more modern-rock-leaning emo records, but it does have a richness and warmth that flatters Weiss’s songs. The fuzzed-out, curdled synths that send off "Who You Are Does ≠ Where You Are" deliver the record’s biggest sonic thrill, while the humming string accompaniments on "Anesthetic" make it prettiest song the band has ever recorded. Also flattering these songs: drummer Josh Sparks, a new addition to the band who already feels irreplaceable. His frolicsome drum work ties together the slow tracks together and lights up the fast ones. On the ripping "Adult Contempt" he’s essentially the lead instrument.
Sparks’ drumming is the showiest element on an album that’s mostly disinterested in showboating. What’ll be most surprising about Standards to anybody still weary of the emo tag is how tasteful it all sounds. In his many interviews on the subject, Weiss has sought not only to reclaim the term emo but also to normalize it, arguing in effect that it’s as just as respectable and ordinary as any other genre, and that for all its youthful appeal it’s the kind of music that you can grow old with, too. On Standards, a thoughtful album about bracing for the future while grieving the past, he’s leading by example.
