Two years ago, we named For Everest a Band To Watch based on the strength of their two early EPs, No Jazz Rock and Last Of The Dogstronauts. The New York group is adept at channeling classic-era emo into something that both celebrates and subverts its forbears and, while they aren’t necessarily breaking any new ground, it’s great to hear this sort of music done so well and with such tight precision when too many bands nowadays are sloppy with the same tools at their disposal. “Autonomy,” the lead single from their upcoming debut full-length We Are At Home In The Body, demonstrates For Everest’s skill at wielding the genre’s cathartic bursts and swells.

It perpetuates the drunk-drive-home narrative that has been the locus of many an emo song and subtly twists it, turning that brash notion into a commentary on the struggle of wanting to get out of a soul-sucking relationship with an addict but feeling to guilty to assert your own sense of self. “If the cigarettes don’t cloud your lungs and rot your teeth, and the drugs don’t eat your heart and slur your speech,” Sarah Cowell sings in the hook. “If you make it home tonight without killing anyone else, I hope you find a way to hurt yourself.” The breakdown pivots from that hurt, though, and careens right into a trapped feeling with an appropriately constrained sonic flare: “The engine’s on fire and I’m stuck inside/ I said I was fine, and I lied.” Listen and watch a Joe Kelly-directed video for the track below.

Tracklist:
01 “Reasons #2-7″
02 “Vitamins”
03 “Slurpee Pt 1″
04 “Slurpee Pt 2″
05 “I’m In A Boxcar Buried Inside A Quarry”
06 “Autonomy”
07 “Penny Royalty”
08 “The Body”
09 “50 50″

We Are At Home In The Body is out 7/29 via Broken World Media. Pre-order it here.