Welcome to Past-Hardcore, a series where I take a closer look at some of my favorite obscure bands and releases within post-hardcore. Somehow I’ve decided to start off with perhaps the most obscure one in my arsenal, coming in at 28 monthly listeners on Spotify, only 9 YouTube subscribers, and 1,625 listeners on last.fm.
Named after the tragic short story by Evan Hunter (which is honestly one of the most tragic stories I’ve read lately), Alberta’s On the Sidewalk Bleeding is a post-hardcore band who’s songs keep getting stuck in my head.
On the Sidewalk Bleeding was Andrew Hansen, Paul Hansen, Shane Meehan, Jeff Reirson, and Ruben (he wasn’t tagged in the Facebook post I got the names from).
The Concrete EP was released in 2009 (last.fm says August 29th) I first listened to this EP back in February back when I was exploring the history of post-hardcore in Sacramento, but this band showed up as similar to the ones I was looking at, and the last.fm algorithm was right! One of my favorite obscure post-hardcore EPs. My favorite songs are I’m Not Afraid, Journals, and Spanish.
Spanish was their most popular track on MySpace. It makes an a energetic entrance with excellent guitar tone, a moment of silence into a drum fill, back to the guitar with some chugging thrown in there. There are two calm sections that balance out the overdriven guitar very nicely and remind me of modern progressive post-hardcore with the clean guitar and the almost-shuffle beat, light on the hi-hat, with some rim clicking.
Besides their EP, the band released two singles: If You Fall and Fear Aside.
A CD release show of their only EP was hosted March 11th 2009. The band had their farewell show on September 27th, 2013, almost exactly 10 years ago. The last active post on any of their social media accounts was a post from 2020, which leaves me wondering if there could be a reunion. Most of The Concrete EP is available on Instagram, so that means someone is still active at least a little bit and this project isn’t completely forgotten.
If someone has that CD and doesn’t mind parting with it… I’ll be happy to take it off your hands, I need to know the lyrics. I’d love to cover a song off this album someday. Hoping for a reunion show for an excuse to visit Alberta again, hopefully when I actually have money to do stuff like that.