25 years of catharsis

Hopper’s essay sketches an uncomfortable picture of emo’s backsliding from the sophisticated, literate pens of bands like Jawbreaker – all men, sure, but at least they gave names and nuance to the women in their lyrics. Of the young women singing their guts out in the front row, Hopper wrote: “There is no them up there.”

But the essay omits one crucial detail: Rainer Maria were up there. With a name indebted to their shared love of poetry, Caithlin De Marrais, Kaia Fischer and William Kuehn first took the stage in 1995. They sang and played with passion, volume and skill, doing things their way at every turn. They were so legit that a young man named Mike Kinsella was, for a time, their merch guy. (And we can only assume Jim Adkins moonlighted as their accountant.)

Rainer Maria stayed the course until 2006, outlasting many of their contemporaries as the genre underwent successive deaths and rebirths and coup d’états. Along the way, they put out five exceptional albums, each of which strayed a little further from their tumultuous, overcast debut and towards a more presentable indie rock sound akin to later-era Sleater-Kinney. After a long hiatus, the band reformed and released their sixth album, S/T, in 2017.

Whether they intended to or not, Rainer Maria paved the way for the more equitable scene we enjoy today – a ‘scene’, in the loose, non-localised sense of the word, ruled by the likes of Hayley Williams and populated by women: Kicksie, Pool Kids, SUDS, and Home Is Where to name just a few. The singer of the latter band, Brandon MacDonald, is transgender, and incidentally so is Kaia Fischer, the guitarist of Rainer Maria. In 2024, then, emo is where the girls are – and the trans people, and the queer people, and the non-White people. It isn’t perfect but it’s moving in the right direction, and though it would be disingenuous to credit this progress to Rainer Maria alone, it is hard to overstate how important they were.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Rainer Maria’s quietly revolutionary second album Look Now Look Again, an emo masterclass in nine tracks (fun fact: each of their albums has exactly nine). Between the serene, glacial arpeggios of the opener, “Rise”, and the driving punk rock clamour of the finale, “I’m Melting”, the album unfolds like an exhaustive therapy session. Every song sounds like the process of expunging long-repressed trauma and then basking in after-cry clarity. “I absolutely remember trying to write songs that had that release,” lead singer and bassist De Marrais confirms. “That’s what we were trying to get on tape.”

But if catharsis is the baseline, what do we call the parts of the album that drive even further into the red? “Centrifuge”, for example – a song about De Marrais and Fischer’s mothers – has a transcendent outro section during which De Marrais repeatedly wails out the admission, “I’ve gone away but I can’t escape the fact that you’re not home,” battling flailing cymbals and Fischer’s skittering, staccato pull-offs. It sounds euphoric and distraught at the same time. On “Broken Radio”, this big exhale moment is when De Marrais sings, “And I’m certain if I drive into those trees, it’d make less of a mess than you’ve made of me,” practically whispering the last few words as the music launches into a heavy, heaving instrumental interlude. “You’re leeeaaa-viiing!” during “Feeling Neglected?”, her voice cracking with emotion, is another example.

Generously addressing the inspiration behind these moments, De Marrais explains, “[Look Now is] the record where I started to feel like I was back in my own body. With the first record, I had been kind of detached and processing some previous hurts and traumas, so this record was coming back into that sense of self and fullness, and trying to experiment with getting that into songs with words and also performance.” Part of what makes the performance aspect so compelling is De Marrais’ bass playing. Setting the band apart and sometimes stealing the show, the bass parts also imbue the songs with a sense of alertness and dynamism. She doesn’t just play root notes; she elegantly opposes Fischer’s winding guitar parts with phrases that are nimble and melodic enough to pick out and hum yet still provide the arrangement with a muscular foundation.

“When I met Kaia and we were already sparking as artists with our poetry and our love of music, I think Kaia was the one who said, ‘You should play bass, just pick it up, try it,’” De Marrais recalls. “I taught myself. Probably learned Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’ as my first bass line – I had the 7-inch. Having both of them – Kaia and William – encouraging [me meant] I very quickly had a steep learning curve and didn’t rely on what I thought bass should sound like. My world of bass was part of the melody as well. A trio of melodies – guitar, vocals, and bass.”

In addition to this innate musical proficiency, the band had producer Mark Haines on hand to ensure the tape picked up all the intense, unruly emotions fueling their songwriting, that nothing was lost in translation. “I learned so much about how, while you’re mixing, you are tweaking these magical moments out of each song, which I hadn’t understood before,” De Marrais says of the process. “Mark was so generously exploring and explaining to us so that we were learning as we went. I think I learned to trust myself. Which is huge.”

Ideas tend to snowball during any learning process, particularly when aided by self-belief. Look Now Look Again manages to navigate all of its competing ideas by deferring to impulse and interpersonal connection, rather than convention. In other words, the songs don’t adhere to predictable structures, instead rising and falling in line with their players’ whims. Abrupt changes in tempo and dynamics feel as natural as your next breath, and that’s because the album forces you to be present in the moment with it, setting aside expectations. Take Rainer Maria’s most-performed song, “Planetary”, which spends its first two minutes sleepily lulling back and forth between two swirling chords, winding up to a climax, and then explodes. The outro takes an even more extreme pivot as it devolves into a breathless gallop, the instruments under attack.

With their creative impulses unsated, Rainer Maria released the Atlantic EP a few months after Look Now Look Again. Atlantic is an addendum that maintains the intensity and quality of Look Now. “Soul Singer”, in particular, is one of the band’s catchiest tunes, its addictive bass melody and candied vocal harmonies recalling 39/Smooth-era Green Day. Both records were made at Butch Vig’s now-defunct Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. De Marrais recalls that the basement housed a trove of master tapes from bands including Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, and that “Anyone who came in the studio – Shirley Manson, because Garbage did some stuff over the years while we were there – was so down to earth and friendly and kind and helpful.”

From our conversation, it’s clear that Rainer Maria attracted good people and valued their community. Their adopted hometown of Madison had something to do with this, at least in the beginning. Emo’s second wave, following the more visceral, less melodic sound of D.C. bands such as Rites of Spring, famously incubated in the Midwest. Many bands of this late-‘90s period orbited Chicago, but the real action unfolded in peripheral college towns like Champaign, Illinois (see: Braid, American Football, Polyvinyl Records), and Madison, where Rainer Maria formed and operated until they later relocated to Brooklyn.

“I think being in this band in Madison was just such a delightful experience and we were so lucky because the attitude, at least while I was there, was one of community,” De Marrais shares. “We set up shows for other bands and we could also extend that hospitality ourselves. It was a special place during that time for us.” Referencing peers such as American Football, The Promise Ring and Braid, she says, “We were constantly touring with these bands, so we were friends with them, and we were certainly inspired by them at the time, and I do remember their reactions when we played as well.”

De Marrais has released three solo albums since Rainer Maria’s initial run, including the eerie, sedated electronics of 2021’s What Will You Do Then?, which is more Jenny Hval than Rainer Maria. Does she find it frustrating to still be asked about – even measured against – an album she made while Bill Clinton was in office? “As a music lover, I have bands that I love that have put out many, many records, and while I’m still absolutely thrilled and interested in new music, there’s always an album that I cherish above others for different reasons,” she says, discrediting the illusion that there is ever a gap between artist and fan. “I could never have seen in advance what album would really stick with listeners,” she continues. “I’m very honoured and very grateful that, of all our records, there is even that discussion. It’s very endearing to me and not frustrating in the least, and it doesn’t stop me from making new music all the time. It’s quite lovely.”

Later this year, De Marrais, Fischer and Kuehn will perform as Rainer Maria for the first time in four years. Swap Vegas for a midwestern VFW hall and their chosen forum would be perfect: Best Friends Forever Fest, which takes place this October at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, is a comprehensive Class of ‘99 emo reunion, featuring Cap’n Jazz, American Football, The Get Up Kids and plenty more old friends who also seem to track their past through every new room they enter. But De Marrais, who has been spending time with the Rainer Maria catalogue in advance of the show, trying to “bring these songs into another decade,” sees the healthy side of emo’s nostalgia fetish. “I see time as not so linear, more circular, and coming back to things can be very helpful on different levels,” she suggests. “‘Reunion’ is a word that’s very powerful and meaningful – to reunite, for different reasons, across our human experience.”

Whenever anything – a genre, a band, a TV show – coasts off of its past, existential questions hang in the air. But Rainer Maria’s reunion isn’t fan service. It isn’t a band clinging to relevancy or chasing a pay cheque. It’s for their own reasons. “It just seems like a wonderful way to reunite with these prolific, fantastic artists, musicians, people, friends,” De Marrais explains, “so, selfishly, I think it’s a great opportunity to check back in and show support to the people we loved then and still love now.” It’s the same premise for listeners, as we return over and over to albums we loved then and still love now – albums we can’t outrun because we weren’t meant to, or would be foolish to. Look Now Look Again, with all of its candid, messy, immersive, cathartic beauty, is the perfect example – one that explicitly encourages you to look again. And again. And again.