The Curse

There was such a flood of mediocre emo bands at the turn of the millennium that My Hotel Year's second album, 2004's The Curse, is a refreshing reminder of what made the style interesting in the first place. Getting rid of most of the self-conscious "complexity" and artifice of their mildly pretentious first album, 2001's The Composition of Ending and Phrasing — and, probably not coincidentally, two-thirds of the band that made that spotty debut, with singer-guitarist Travis Adams the only holdover — and replacing it with songs that balance Fugazi-like intensity and some undeniable pop hooks. The first single, "Everyday," is unapologetically catchy enough to be a blink-182 single, and while some fans of the band's debut might be horrified by the implications of that comparison, Adams' songs don't feel like they've been consciously dumbed-down or otherwise tampered with for mass appeal; rather, in the tradition of Pinkerton-era Weezer, The Curse is a middle ground between pop sweetness and emo mopery.