Among the most celebrated (and best named) acts of what many called ‘the emo revival,’ Algernon Cadwallader famously broke the scene’s heart not just with Midwestern prettiness, but their actual breakup as well in 2012.
The Pennsylvania quartet managed to release a fair amount of recorded heat from EP’s and singles but most notably 2008’s Some Kind of Cadwallader, which paved the way for 5th-wave emo while carving out a frenzied sense of ‘nowness’ somewhere between contemporaries like pretend and Glocca Mora.
But fast forward to 2025, where the band had been largely silent outside of a couple of covers and collections, when they randomly started teasing clips of… well, something, and that something is finally here:
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The band is band together now in the realest of senses – a new single, a new music video, and soon a brand new album via Saddle Creek Records, titled Trying Not to Have A Thought. Also, get this – according to the press release, it’s the OG lineup:
“Trying Not to Have a Thought isn’t just the first Algernon Cadwallader album since 2011’s Parrot Flies. It’s also the first with their original lineup—vocalist-bassist Peter Helmis, guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahony, and drummer Nick Tazza—since Algernon’s seminal 2008 debut, Some Kind of Cadwallader. Shortly after that album was recorded—and long before it was heralded as a lodestar for the 2010s “emo revival”—Tazza and Mahony departed the band. Despite their looming influence on the aforementioned “revival,” Algernon broke up in 2012 following the release of Parrot Flies and remained stubbornly deceased until their fiendishly anticipated resurrection in 2022.
“‘I almost see it as fate that it boiled us down to this core, our original form,” Helmis says. “There’s a certain magic to that that couldn’t really be replicated.’“
We’re fans of all iterations of AC, but that’s pretty exciting, especially considering the natural feel-good aura of “Hawk.” We can’t wait for more either way – don’t forget to pre-order the record here.
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