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Historically eclipsed by the influence of the foundational post-hardcore bands from neighboring New Jersey (your Lifetimes, your Midtowns), NYC emo is enjoying a moment thanks to new-school groups like alt-pop specialists Zachshots and screamoviolence outfit OLTH. Brooklyn-based Holidays in United States, while hardly new on the block, officially enter the chat with How to Count to Five: 10 endearing nu-emo numbers that split the difference between the genre’s first and second waves.
The spectre of Midwest emo looms large; American Football in particular casts a considerable shadow. The album also brings to mind the iconic cover of Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool, where the band sits on a couch looking dejected as a party rages: One imagines Holidays in United States striking this exact pose at one of the go-nowhere gatherings mentioned on How to Count to Five. The band does starry-eyed disenchantment undeniably well, mostly because their particular brand of moping is served with a wink; it’s not for nothing that one of their earliest and most touching songs is called “All My Homies Cry.”
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Holidays in United States prove to be a fun, self-deprecating hang, and they aren’t above indulging in emo-revival shtick. In “Topics for Discussion,” vocalist Annika Haakonsen regrets leaving one of those aforementioned parties, desperate to escape the stifling, Seinfeldian weight of “[talking] to strangers about nothing.” The back half of the track, downcast and tortured, evokes the operatic desolation of Waiting-era Thursday. “If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit…” piles on noodling Cap’n Jazz-style guitars alongside lyricism that, however familiar, feels unusually vivid: “I’m stealing your shirt and wearing it out/I’m sharing this smell with you and our couch.” These are proclamations designed to trigger the nostalgia of anyone who remembers when the easiest way to listen to bands like Mineral and Small Brown Bike was an illegal download.
“Girl Problems” infuses the band’s offbeat sound with jazzy math rock drums and exactly the right amount of half-screamed backing vocals. In “Dainty Little Flower,” whose disconsolate guitars recall Coheed and Cambria’s The Second Stage Turbine Blade, Haakonsen rejects the idea of being anyone’s doormat and yearns for personal growth. “I <3 Haters” leans into the bitterness that’s long fueled certain emo sub-variants, though the song’s Wojack meme reference will have old heads checking their Rites of Spring comparisons at the door; the anachronism keeps it feeling fresh.
Since their self-titled debut LP in 2024, Holidays in United States have emerged as key players in a scene that occasionally feels weighed down by referentiality. Some of their self-consciously ponderous song titles, like “Edward vs. Jacob vs. Simon” and “My License Is Suspended, Your License Is Expired,” recall the verbosity of 2000s mainstays like Taking Back Sunday and Fall Out Boy. Yet the homage, however secondhand, feels earned. There’s something sweet and ingratiating about the songs on How to Count to Five: They feel tossed-off without being scattershot.
