It’s always reassuring to know in the mid-2020s that the internet can still be a source of good. Austin-based trio Oakwood released two emo-punk EPs just over a decade ago without much fanfare, only for them to recently (and justly) catch fire out of nowhere after the two projects were re-uploaded to streaming services. In fact the sudden attention was so momentous that Noah Roots, TJ James, and Mathew Dwyer not only reassembled, but wrote and recorded their debut album some 13 years into the band’s existence.
Recorded with grunge-punk icon Will Yip and released via his Memory Music label, Blurred Away arrives this Friday. Blending anthemic Midwest-emo riffs with harsh post-hardcore vocals that occasionally veer into the frantic delivery of a band like Touché Amoré, the 10-track collection bridges the gap between various waves of emo as it rides the current of the genre’s mid-2010s revival and feels distinctly of-the-moment. At the same time, the band mostly pulled from emo’s early days, with artists like Sunny Day Real Estate, Jimmy Eat World, and various factions of the Braid extended universe comprising the trio’s influence playlist they threw together for us ahead of the record’s release.
You can find all of their picks as well as their commentary on each song below. You can also pre-order the record here, and find their full slate of upcoming North American shows spanning late summer and early fall here.
NOAH ROOTS
Joie De Vivre, “This Ship Has Sailed”
Probably one of my top 10 emo tracks of all time that scratches this itch in my brain in the best way. For Blurred Away, the melodic yelling and dual vocals parts were a huge inspiration for us—especially for the dual vocals part in “Fields Behind the House,” something Oakwood hasn’t done before that we wanted to try.
Title Fight, “Dreamcatchers”
My favorite Title Fight song. I picked this track because it reminds me of how I envisioned “Serpentine (My Whole Life)” would be the first time TJ sent the phone recording of the beginning riff. Playing in hardcore bands in addition to Oakwood I thought the inspiration would be a cool and different approach to writing a faster, heavier, more punk/hardcore-driven song.
Orwell, “Angular Momentum”
A Braid universe band I don’t see talked about very often. I stumbled upon this project in the wake of all these second-wave emo bands being uploaded to streaming services and I loved the flow of the song into Nanna singing, “We buy hugs like over the counter drugs.” It’s bouncy and makes you want to move your head, which I took inspiration from for “Fields Behind the House.”
Small Brown Bike, “The Cold”
A big influence on Oakwood trying out louder/distorted guitars in addition to writing two guitar parts while still trying to keep the emo/post-hardcore sound. SBB was a band that brought Mat and I together when starting the first band I was ever in pre-Oakwood. Forever a huge inspiration to the Oakwood universe.
TJ JAMES
Seaweed, “Crush Us All”
Seaweed influenced a lot of my favorite emo bands and were themselves influenced by a lot of my favorite punk bands. I also feel connected to them because they're from Tacoma, where I lived for a time in what ended up being a strange and isolating period of my life in which I left Texas for a city where I had no friends, hated my job, and was 2,000 miles away from my then-girlfriend, now wife.
Jawbreaker, “Chemistry”
Jawbreaker is one of my favorite bands and this song always resonated with me because growing up I was always kind of a loser/dork/nerd, whatever you want to call it. I probably still am, but I'm just ignorant of it now that I'm older.
The Get Up Kids, “I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel”
My favorite song by The Get Up Kids. Songs like this are what I listen to when I try to understand what makes a song's structure pleasant to my ears.
Algernon Cadwallader, “Foggy Mountain”
I always say that Algernon is the band I wanted to sound like when we started playing, but wasn’t nearly a good enough musician to actually rip their sound off like I wanted to.
MAT DWYER
Braid, “The Chandelier Swing”
The band and song I credit most for my reignited obsession with emo music. I had only heard Braid in passing before I happened across this song on YouTube around 2009 while I was living alone for the first time. I love that it constantly builds toward a high-energy payoff and then pulls back to this light vulnerability with soft-spoken vocals. Something in that push and pull strikes a chord in me, and I find myself coming back to this song over and over again. Overall, just a very influential song for me to this day.
Maggat, “Your Plan Is Too Obsessive”
I got into Maggat around the time we started writing Blurred Away, which flipped my somewhat pessimistic view on modern music discovery to a more positive outlook. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it also helped me reconcile Oakwood’s sudden exposure, and made me appreciate how sometimes music can just fall into your lap when you need it. There’s something about the rawness of this song that sits with me long after it’s ended, and it had an influence on me to want Blurred Away as an album to be a little more raw, especially vocally.
Sunny Day Real Estate, “Red Elephant”
If memory serves, shortly after we reunited as Oakwood, I told Noah how I had only really listened to the Diary LP from Sunny Day, but hadn’t dug into their discography much. He said I really needed to listen to LP2, and I immediately felt a door open to so many songs that I didn’t realize I was craving at the time. I have a soft spot for the lack of refinement in this album up against everything else they’ve done. There’s an almost forced earnestness in the vocals with this track that resonates with me. I find myself bouncing between this and “Spade and Parade” as my favorite new discoveries, and I was definitely jamming this a lot around the time we were writing and recording.
Jimmy Eat World, “Crush”
Possibly my favorite band, and I have a favorite album and song from them for so many chapters of my life. The current chapter is Clarity, and it’s a great time to be a fan of that album. I was driving a lot while we were jamming, and listened to it front-to-back every single day for weeks around the time we recorded Blurred Away. Crush still hangs on as an earworm from that time, and I feel we drew a lot of inspiration from this track in particular. Sonically, we wanted to try something similar. I would also blast it in my car and shout “My lungs are so numb from holding back” as loud as I could. Sometimes I still do that.
