Whatever Happened to the Corn-Fed Iowan Alt Rock of the Envy Corps?
The Envy Corps originated from Ames, Iowa, the home of Iowa State University, and like most music from Iowa you’ve probably never heard of it. That may be a little unfair to our readers, but they have about 2300 monthly Spotify listeners, so they’ve been about as underground as a band that’s put out 4 quality studio albums over their history can get.
Their last album came out in 2011, but have since dropped a couple singles in 2019 as they regrouped from a hiatus. Based on their twitter page, it seems they’re still together and creating new music again, but it’s naturally been fairly quiet since there hasn’t been much live show opportunities in the last 2 years and they haven’t released anything new in that time.
When they were at their peak years of making new music and touring, The Envy Corps were creators of some actually pretty excellent alternative music. In fact their last album It Culls You is filled with some gem songs which have great melody and drama building. Maybe a fair comparison would be Cold War Kids or even some later Cage the Elephant. Elements of psych rock and electronica are also interweaved at times reminiscent of Moby’s song building in much of his work.
Much of my personal standout favorites come from It Culls You, including “Fools (How I Survived You & Even Laughed)” and “Cmd + Q.” But earlier albums like 2008’s Dwell gave us some awesome tracks like “Wires & Wool” and “Story Problem.”
After 2011, The Envy Corps pretty much dropped off. It’s hard to see how a band producing so much quality music and seemingly putting out their best work on their most recent album took a big hiatus, but for whatever reason sometimes great bands get overlooked, and The Envy Corps really never had a big hit that took them further. Perhaps that was the impetus of the hiatus, but now with the group back and supposedly creating more new music, perhaps they will increase their cult following with more new music coming in the future. Comment below why you think this band maybe never got the due it deserved and if you like them enough to wait on the edge of your seat if they do ever release something more new in the future.
Best Song:
“Story Problem” From Dwell
Honorable Mentions:
“Cmd + Q” From It Culls You
“Wires & Wool” From Dwell
Best Lyric:
“And in the time it took to write you this song I could’ve mapped a million ways home, But the memories and fantasies were fallacies, I’d missed it all along” From “Wires & Wool”