Photo by Scott Troyan

While we could do without most of today’s third (and fourth, and fifth…) wave emo disciples and their stylistic redundancies, we could never do without its trailblazers. Algernon Cadwallader are very much one of the bands who we’re blessed to have back in our good listening graces — one of those rare instances where during the years they were initially active, they had a healthy cult following, but were still prone to playing some DIY show in some local scenester’s backyard and achieved more praise after they were gone. The decade between their exit and their reunion in 2022 has properly recognized them as a transcendent influence worthy of headlining their own tours and top billing punk and hardcore fests, however, and to hear something new from the Philly-base four-piece in the year 2025 is really all you need in how you get the formula down pat.

“Hawk” — the lead single from the band’s first new album in 14 years, Trying Not to Have a Thought — is akin to how American Football do twinkly Midwestern emo better than anyone from their era, in that vocalist and bassist Peter Helmis, guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahony, and drummer Nick Tazza are the best at running with what their influences walked with. The listen is a perfection on what they’ve already laid the foundation for in interweaving soft-spindling math rock, spiky punk outbursts, and wistful, diary entry internal monologues shouted along joyously in the frame of youth, even when the context is held from a place years later all the more morbid. “How much of our lives did we spend kicking out the jams?,” Helmis asks. From today’s vantage point, they’re still going hard.

Directed by: Darby Irrgang & Ricky Christian

Algernon Cadwallader’s Trying Not to Have a Thought will be released September 12th on Saddle Creek.