EP Review: stella / The Ritornello Form – ‘Feels Like Summer Split’
Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
We don’t call it Midwest emo anymore; we have to call it wild west emo now. There’s something happening out there with bands throwing it back to the most obscure, least trendy forms of emo from the ’90s. We first glimpsed it with Forward, the debut album from Santa Cruz’s First Day Back, one of our favorite albums of 2025 so far, and the new split from stella and The Ritornello Form is another fantastic entry into the canon (see also: my point of you’s recent EP).
Eugene, Oregon, emo trio stella debuted last December with the three-song A Streetcar Named Desire EP, which showcased their blend of emo’s more melodic, sensitive side with the confrontational bent of post-hardcore. The guitars twinkle as arpeggios unwind gently, but they aren’t afraid to get loud and yelpy, although they never fully dip over into screamo (a sound they explore more with their sister band we’rethecurrency). While most emo today is rooted in either math rock or early 2000s pop-punk, stella’s clearest antecedents are the lesser-known emo bands now getting reissued by Numero, bands like Bells on Trike or Eldritch Anisette.
The Ritornello Form, hailing from Las Vegas, has been playing local shows for nearly a year but haven’t released anything until now. Their take on emo is a bit messier than stella’s, a bit less tightly wound, much closer in sound and spirit to First Day Back than to their splitmates, dual vocals constantly competing for spotlight over spindly riffs. Though these are their first two songs, The Ritornello Form sound remarkably self-assured here. That both bands pull from the same set of influences while taking them in different directions helps Feels Like Summer Split stay fresh, each pair of songs complementing the other without rehashing the same sound.
“Wannabe” opens the EP and immediately signals that stella has grown quite a bit in only a few short months; the song’s more streamlined and catchier than any of the Streetcar material, and while it might be jarring to hear turntable scratches in an emo song–almost certainly a first for the genre?–they’re incorporated tastefully. “Dizzy” has more in common with the three songs on Streetcar, a rougher, more aggressive cut that echoes emo giants like Christie Front Drive and Strictly Ballroom in its abrupt dynamic shifts. The final minute of the song drags stella into the darkest, heaviest place they’ve got thus far in their five-song discography before pulling back and shifting into a classic twinkly, bright outro.
In the same way that stella begins their half of Feels Like Summer Split with their more instantly gratifying track, The Ritornello Form introduces themselves with “Off by One Again,” which explodes to life after a pretty thirty-second intro into a cascade of overlapping girl/boy vocals. It’s chaotic in the best way, and it manages to be both infectious and overwhelming at once; when things level out for its single verse, it’s a moment to breathe right before things ratchet back up when the chorus repeats. They close things out with “The Weight of Two Too Many,” which calls to mind the most accessible Jejune or Penfold songs in its relatively straightforward structure; it’s also the song on which the EP’s production–booming, tinny drums and crackly guitars–is most an asset. The way the guitars dance into and out of range in the second verse gives “The Weight of Two Too Many” a lurching energy, an uneasy tension; the feeling that the drums might overtake the vocals during the chorus adds a sense of urgency.
Taken as a whole, stella and The Ritornello Form’s Feels Like Summer Split is an impressive document of two of the youngest bands in a still-burgeoning scene. Emo has its share of era-defining split EPs, when two titans of the genre come together to epitomize the scene at the time–The Promise Ring/Texas Is the Reason, Boys Life/Christie Front Drive, Empire! Empire!/Joie De Vivre. Maybe when emo hits its tenth wave Feels Like Summer Split will be seen in those terms. Even if it isn’t, though, that’s no failure. No matter how it may be viewed in the future, it’s proof that stella and The Ritornello Form have tapped into what’s made emo such an enduring genre. Both bands are at the top of their game–and both bands have only just gotten started.
Disappointing / Average/ Good / Great / Phenomenal
Feels Like Summer Split is out now.
––
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch. And if you want The Alternative delivered straight to your inbox every month, sign up for our free newsletter. Either way, thanks for reading!
