Embrace

Embrace’s sole album, posthumously released in 1987, sounds almost unrecognizable as emo. It takes tremendous influence from moody British post punk while keeping the same general approach as hardcore. But on paper that’s a pretty good equation for a lot of emo music that would follow. Ian MacKaye was always too much of a strident vocalist with evolving views of the world to be constrained into a narrow genre. But the best songs — “Give Me Back” and “Building” among the best here — function as brief capsules of hardcore propulsion, lyrical insecurity and textured guitar playing that would point a way out of hardcore’s expressive cul de sac.