Rainer Maria

Rainer Maria formed in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1995 as an emo trio when singer/guitarist Kaia Fischer and drummer William Kuehn revived their earlier partnership from the poetically minded local band Ezra Pound. Adding singer/bassist Caithlin De Marrais to the lineup, they completed a debut demo cassette in just six weeks and exhausted its entire 350-copy pressing almost immediately. After scattered tracks on compilations, the group issued a self-titled EP on Polyvinyl in 1996. The single “New York: 1955,” released in early 1997, signaled their move toward the restrained melodic approach heard on the subsequent album Past Worn Searching. The band stayed quiet through 1998 before resurfacing the following year with both the full-length Look Now Look Again and the EP Atlantic. A Better Version of Me reached listeners in early 2001.

Sales climbed sharply over the next two years, surpassing 80,000 records worldwide. Their buoyant indie rock proved infectious, sustaining an unusually devoted audience. Long Knives Drawn arrived in January 2003 as their most polished recording to date and posed a direct challenge to their rock contemporaries. March 2004 brought Anyone in Love with You (Already Knows), the group’s first CD/DVD package; the double-disc collection gathered live recordings from their road dates along with footage captured at a 2003 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, performance. The band switched to Grunion Records in 2006 for Catastrophe Keeps Us Together.

The record’s title proved ironic: after a final round of shows that December, Rainer Maria disbanded. Eight years later, in December 2014, they reconvened for a New Year’s Eve performance at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. Additional dates in various cities during 2015 confirmed the reunion’s staying power, and by summer 2017 they were issuing singles previewing a new album. Returning to Polyvinyl, their longtime home, the trio released S/T that August—their first full-length in eleven years.