All right, yes, you're right: "Emo Album of the Year" does sound like damnation with faint praise at best — the sort of title you'd bestow on something you disliked with an especially epicurean sort of distaste, like a "Best Smelling Fart" award or something. (Sorry.) But that's not what I mean, so let's leave our prejudices at the door, however hard-won these prejudices were and however prescient they often seem to have turned out. Lasting phenomena really do gain legitimacy just by hanging around at the margins of discourse long enough, and there's nothing anybody can do about it, so there's no use complaining. Or crying. More on this later.
A couple of years ago we sat down together and discussed the term "emo," didn't we? And we concluded that it was silly, didn't we? Yes — I remember it well — it seems like we were discussing Orchid or some similarly-named emo band. All for naught! Emo has continued to groundswell and tree-line, and the bands proliferate & segment, and now it's not a subgenre of punk at all any more but a full-fledged rock genre. There are more emo bands than southern boogie bands around right now, which may not seem remarkable but, umm, actually is. And while arguing that these bands are really just a new wave of rock bands rather than architects of a Great And Bold New Genre may seem like a battle worth waging, it isn't. Remember that the term "heavy metal," prior to the great upheavals of the early '90s, was often used in reference to bands whom history will stuff in the same "Used Rock" bins as Queen and Status Quo. Young rock bands with noserings and forearm tattoos want their stuff called "emo"? Fine, sure. Emo it is.