Elliott, Vendetta Red and Mae

Ready for three more so-so emo bands to separate you from your hard-earned eight bucks? Elliott, Vendetta Red and Mae, three of the so-so-iest emo bands around, sure are. Elliott drops in in support of the new Song in the Air, the Louisville outfit's third album and its first since some seismic lineup shift I'm positive was a very big deal to them. Song continues the band's unstated mission of downsizing Radiohead/Sigur Rós-style nü-prog to dimensions familiar to kids who wear backpacks with nothing in them; if you listen to the CD while your window's open and the sound of traffic outside is almost loud enough to smother the music, you might find it very meaningful. (The superfluous string arrangements by Rachel's member Christian Frederickson would help, too, if the Rachel's weren't so damn boring themselves.) On its new Between the Never and the Now, due next month on Epic, Seattle's Vendetta Red isn't boring at all: Lead single "Shatterday" features a big group of kids singing along with the front man at the end, a great trick I'm totally not sick of and one that more emo groups besides Dashboard Confessional really need to start exploiting. Too bad about the rest of Between's considerable Queensrche damage. Clean-cut Virginians Mae's Destination: Beautiful isn't too boring, doesn't feature a youth chorus and just goes ahead and has a song called "Summertime." If this isn't so-so emo, I'm putting my very out-of-print Sunny Day Real Estate 7-inches on eBay.