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Orchestras Can Be Emo Too

Orchestras Can Be Emo Too

Screaming over the When We Were Young 2024 lineup

Monday morning I woke up and looked at my phone just a few minutes after 7:00 am pacific time to see my comrades in the MCR Archive retweeted LiveNation announcing When We Were Young Fest 2024 with MCR as the headliner. Y’all the way I screamed and jumped up in bed!

The LiveNation tweet was then almost immediately deleted and then came a few hours of refreshing multiple accounts relentlessly - I had LiveNation, the festival page, MCR’s page, AltPress, and the festival website all up in different tabs, bouncing around between each in a cycle of hitting refresh.

I didn’t want to get too excited right away just in case, but I also was pulling up hotel rates and was in my discord group chat freaking out and trying to make travel plans.

Then, around 9:30 am pacific time, the festival website updated with a page to register to receive a presale code. It slowly started to feel real.

And finally - at 10:00 am - official posts went up on social media from LiveNation, the festival, and bands. It’s happening.

ALLLLL these bands that I love will be performing their iconic albums in full, with the cherry on top being MCR performing The Black Parade. I am already having an existential crisis about the lineup schedule and what tough choices there’s going to be.

I’ll see y’all next October in Vegas!

Missed last week’s newsletter? Read it here

🖤 Elisa

IT’S NOT A PHASE

Things found on the interwebz this week:

Death Lens’ new music video feels straight outta the 90’s in all the best ways → YouTube
Hot Mulligan released a lo-fi EP that is perfect music to get some writing done to → Spotify
Conor Oberst announced mini residencies for NYC and LA coming up in the spring → BrooklynVegan

FROM THE PIT

Hawthorne Heights has been on tour with the Emo Orchestra this fall and I am SO GLAD that I didn’t miss this show. WHAT A CONCEPT! Sure, other rock artists have played with orchestras before, but to my knowledge never an emo band.

I am a certified band nerd™️ and I went full nerd mode over the orchestral arrangements. Conductor/arranger Evan Rogers is a genius - the way these songs written for pop-punk and post-hardcore bands were translated into an orchestral setting was absolutely breathtaking to listen to. A highlight for me was the guitar solo for “The Middle” and how it was translated for the violin section.

Of course the setlist contained a few of Hawthorne Height’s biggest hits, like “Nikki FM” and “Ohio Is For Lovers”, and their newer song “The Storm.” And then they covered a bunch of classic emo bangers - songs from bands including Taking Back Sunday, Death Cab for Cutie, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Story of the Year - and more.

The other part of what made this show really special, was singer JT Woodruff would tell some really in depth stories about each song performed and why it was chosen for the setlist. I loved the stories of how they listened to Taking Back Sunday’s “Tell All Your Friends” on a loop in their tour van, and about the time JT saw Blink-182 at Warped Tour in the late 90s.

I really hope this was just the inaugural tour for the Emo Orchestra, and that we’ll all get the chance to see them interpreting more music from our favorite bands again soon.

Hawthorne Heights and the Emo Orchestra

See the full setlist → Setlist.fm

NOSTALGIA BLAST

In excitement to see The Black Parade performed next year - we gotta throw it back to “The Black Parade Is Dead!” live from Mexico City show! If you’ve never watched it before - the whole thing is up on YouTube to enjoy.