Breakout Chicagoland emo auteur Snow Ellet still has many Glory Days aheadLeor Galilon August 18, 2022 at 11:00 am

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Last year Chicagoland multi-instrumentalist Eric Reyes broke out in emo and pop-punk circles with his debut as Snow Ellet, the EP Suburban Indie Rock Star. It injects the sugar rush of pop punk and emo into crisp, straightforward power-pop hooks, a balanced approach that lets fans indulge their sweet tooth without getting cavities. After the release of Suburban Indie Rock Star, Reyes mixed Kirby Grip’s November 2021 album, Portrait of Bliss, where the local four-piece shifted gears into rocket-engine ambience. That sound has bled into Reyes’s work, judging from Snow Ellet’s June EP, Glory Days (self-released under license to Wax Bodega): though its sounds stay grounded in intimate, earthly concerns, they also sparkle with space rock’s larger-than-life euphoria. Reyes’s blastoff guitars supersize the quotidian emotions around romantic missed connections and twentysomething nostalgia for teenhood until they feel as big as a starlit sky. On “Can’t Hear the Phone,” Reyes’s cross-stitched guitars and sharp, plaintive vocals convey an itchy, queasy lovesickness that’s amped up by dreamy synth melodies and brittle electronic percussion—this sleek song can trigger Proustian recollections of that particular teenage feeling where you’re convinced you’re not from the same planet as all these other people.

Snow Ellet Ogbert the Nerd headlines; Arcadia Grey, Snow Ellet, and Superkick open. Thu 8/25, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $12, 17+

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