Crash of Rhinos

Derby, England has produced exactly one band that matters to a very specific kind of person, and that band is Crash of Rhinos. They have two LPs, almost no B-sides, and a reputation among the emo revival faithful that far exceeds their commercial profile. Now they are back with Logbook, their first album in 13 years, and the people who have been waiting for it are not being subtle about it.

The band formed in the mid-2000s out of the remnants of an instrumental math-rock group called the Jesus Years, whose song titles alone (“My Dancing? What The Fuck Are You On About?” is a real one) suggest a group of people with a particular sense of humor and a deep affection for early-2000s post-rock. When Crash of Rhinos came together, they kept the humor but added weight – a lot of it. Two bassists, two guitarists, five credited vocalists. Not a lineup built for efficiency.

Their 2013 album Knots arrived at an interesting moment. The emo revival had been percolating in online spaces – Tumblr, Reddit, the usual incubators – for years, but it had not quite broken out. Knots did something that other records in the genre had struggled to do: it got taken seriously by outlets that had been ignoring the whole thing. Pitchfork reviewed it positively, which was notable enough that people still mention it. The album sounded like Constantines and Hot Water Music more than Cap’n Jazz, which made it a strange fit in a scene that mostly went the other direction, but also made it more durable.

Then they broke up. Or went on hiatus. The distinction was never entirely clear. Some of them formed Holding Patterns. Life happened. Kids, marriages, careers, geography.

The story of Logbook is largely the story of a band figuring out how to make a record under those conditions. The album took close to a decade to finish. Every member has veto power over every element, a policy that has always been their practice and that, as guitarist Jim Cork explained in a recent interview, resulted in a catalog with almost no wasted material but also an extremely slow production pace. When you have two bassists and five vocalists who all have to agree on everything, you write carefully and you write slowly.

What they have made, by all accounts, is exactly the kind of record people expected from them – which is both a feature and a potential limitation. The bittersweet, muscular, grown-man emo sound that defined Knots is still present on Logbook. The ambition is still there. Whether 13 years of absence has made the band sharper or just made the expectation harder to meet is something listeners will have to decide for themselves.

But the fact that they finished it at all, that they navigated adulthood and distance and the unanimous-consent veto and still produced something new, is genuinely impressive. Crash of Rhinos have always been a cult band. Logbook is not going to change that. But it might deepen it.