The Jealous Sound formed in Los Angeles at the tail end of the 1990s, built from the wreckage of several respected Southern California indie and emo acts. Sunday's Best's Pedro Benito on guitar, John McGinnis of Neither Trumpets nor Drums on bass, ex-Knapsack singer and guitarist Blair Shehan, and former Pulley drummer Tony Palermo began their journey as the Jealous Sound at the tail end of the 1990s. Shehan served as the band's clear creative center, and the group evolved directly from his previous band Knapsack, with Shehan drawing on collaborators from the melodic punk and indie scenes of the 1990s to continue exploring emotional, crescendo driven rock with punk energy. The band signed with Better Looking Records in the summer of 2000 and quickly issued a self titled EP that went on to sell 11,000 copies, landing them gigs with At the Drive-In, the Get Up Kids, the Promise Ring, and Death Cab for Cutie, which made their buzz soar. The band's real breakthrough came with its long-delayed debut full-length. Mojo Records offered the band a contract, but after weeks of negotiating, the label lost its distribution, leaving the group without a deal, though pride did not stop them from returning to Better Looking. By that point the lineup had shifted, as Adam Wade of Shudder to Think stepped in for the departing Palermo before the year's end while the band worked with producer Tim O'Heir. The result, Kill Them with Kindness, appeared in June 2003 and coincided with North American dates supporting the Foo Fighters , cementing the band's reputation as one of the more mature, musically sophisticated voices to emerge from the emo scene. The record's staying power was later recognized when it was placed 31st on Rolling Stone's "40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time" list .
The years following were marked by hiatus and reinvention rather than a steady upward trajectory. Rumors circulated that the band had split, but by 2008 they returned with the Got Friends EP, and the following year supported Sunny Day Real Estate on their reunion tour. That run of shows proved pivotal, as it led to a musical partnership with Sunny Day Real Estate and Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel, who contributed his writing and performing talents, as well as a year working in the Foo Fighters' Studio 606, to the band's sophomore full length, A Gentle Reminder, which arrived in early 2012. The lineup also evolved further, as in 2012 guitarist Michael Richardson, formerly of The New Trust, replaced original member Pedro Benito on lead guitar, with Benito later moving into film and television score composition. By this point the band's rotating cast underscored how deeply it was woven into the Southern California indie and emo lineage, drawing members at various points from Knapsack, Sunday's Best, Jawbox, and Shudder to Think.
In its later years the band remained active only intermittently. The Jealous Sound released its second and last full length album, A Gentle Reminder, on January 31, 2012, and as of December 2016 the band was signed to Rise Records. Though never a mainstream chart act, the group's blend of melodic hooks and heart on sleeve songwriting left a lasting mark on the emo and indie rock underground, with critics repeatedly pointing back to Kill Them with Kindness as a genre high water mark and comparing Shehan's songwriting to peers like the Get Up Kids and Death Cab for Cutie.
The Jealous Sound's road through the early 2000s club and theater circuit is exactly the kind of moment this archive was built to preserve. Wayne Dennon photographed the band once, in 2003, right around the release of Kill Them with Kindness, capturing the group at the point where years of label setbacks finally gave way to a proper full length and dates with the Foo Fighters. Forty of his photographs from that night remain in the collection, and they have been viewed by archive visitors more than 30,000 times, a quiet testament to how many people still care about this unassuming, hard touring band and the era of emo it helped define.
