Mock Orange - Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse

Pitchfork 65

The most recent spate of “Best Emo Albums of All Time” lists makes an admirable attempt to legitimize a style of punk rock that has spent the past two decades derided as something you’re supposed to grow out of. But the inclusions unintentionally serve as the best counterargument: Dear You might be the only time you see a band’s fourth album in there. Nearly of all the classic emo bands either spectacularly implode in their early stages, devolve into sustainable mediocrity or are Fall Out Boy. But after launching some of the leading figures of emo’s 4th wave, Topshelf Records has served as a continuing ed lab for elder statesmen: in 2014, Braid sounded as contemporary and vital as ever on their Will Yip-produced No Coast and also shed some light on the oft-overlooked Jazz June when they released After the Earthquake months later. With their ninth release and first in five years, Mock Orange is in the same place the Velvet Teen were on their 2015 Topshelf comeback All is Illusory: previously unclassifiable to their detriment, they’re now given a new, flattering context in which to be understood.

Looking at it now, Mock Orange’s convoluted trajectory could actually serve as the basis for a tragicomic mockumentary of late-'90s emo. Their first two LPs were produced by Mark Trombino and J. Robbins and released on a label that was destroyed by George Lucas in a copyright infringement suit. After the turn of the century, they evolved into a kind of floral, orchestrated indie rock that the Get Up Kids, the Promise Ring and Saves the Day used to effectively end their commercial peaks. 2004’s sync-friendly Mind is Not Brain somehow found them within reach of MTV2 airplay and major cable shows and fittingly, they toured with Rogue Wave, that era’s definitive “shit luck” band. On their next two albums, they dabbled in literate, NPR-indie and more or less went alt-country. And now, here’s Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse, which was put in jeopardy after a nearly fatal hard drive failure. Seriously, always back things up, kids.

After all that, it’s natural that Mock Orange would spend Put the Kid trying to assess whether the bullshit has been worth it. Single “High Octane Punk Mode” probably would’ve been sarcastic even in their early days, but the lightly chiding tone fits within what is otherwise midtempo, “The O.C.” indie mode. Ryan Grisham relates how his desire to expand his social circle and listening habits even the slightest bit are still seen as betrayals in his community, reflecting on the blinkered view within hardcore that only becomes apparent once you step outside of it: “the safety pin floats way out, but never really goes away.”

As with No Coast, Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse finds itself in an existential and geographic liminal space, between adult responsibility and spiritual upkeep, between major media centers. And yet, while Braid felt marooned even in Chicago, Mock Orange is based out of Evansville, Indiana, a corridor between the Midwest and the South—bordering Kentucky, equidistant from Chicago and Tupelo, Mississippi. Twenty years in, they’ve finally reconciled the strident, universal yearning of their earlier, midwestern emo phase with the twang of 2011's Disguised as Ghosts. Surprisingly, they’ve dropped any vague sense of alt-country for straight-up southern boogie: the blown-out riffs on “Window” and “Too Good Your Dreams Don’t Come True” sound like they are one Dan Auberbach cosign away from KROQ airplay.

And yet, while this is undoubtedly the greatest eighth album from any band ever tagged as emo, Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse itself lacks the true standout moments that would explain what earned Mock Orange their cult status to begin with. The most intriguing hook occurs on “Nine Times,” where brash slide guitars and shifty rhythms pivot into a stately march on the chorus. Elsewhere the choruses cruise rather than soar, and Grisham’s lyrics cut your skin but never draw blood. Brief insight into scene politics aside, most of his judgment is directed at himself for his artistic intransigence. Of course, there’s a cheat code for dealing with this, which is to write about writer’s block: “There was a time when all my lines kept pouring out, now they’ve gone missing,” he sings, lamenting the “dead end verses on my back.” After the self-deprecating “Too Good Your Dreams Don’t Come True,” the final song is titled “Tell Us Your Story” and it's final line is “I fear I’ve stayed too long.” But the song itself is the first time on the album Mock Orange sound triumphant, so while that might have been his fear, it was worth the past five years to push through it.