The City On Film

by Mark Deming Bob Nanna has earned a considerable reputation as a founding member of two noted and influential bands, emo pioneers Braid and the more pop-oriented Hey Mercedes, but the City on Film marked Nanna's first effort to strike out on his own. Nanna began recording solo material in 1997 during downtime while Braid were on the road, but it wasn't until the latter days of Hey Mercedes that he began writing and recording music with an eye toward creating a separate musical identity for the music. While hardly abandoning rock & roll, with his music as the City on Film Nanna introduced into the mix elements of alt-country and the influence of songwriters like Jeff Buckley and Morrissey. In 2004, Nanna released his first EP as the City on Film, a six-song disc called I'd Rather Be Wine Drunk, followed shortly after by a split EP with the Novi Split titled The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friends. In 2005, after Hey Mercedes broke up, Nanna released the first full album from the City on Film, In Formal Introduction, released through Grand Theft Autumn, and another EP followed later in the year, American Diary. Nanna soon began taking the City on Film on the road, using a shifting lineup of musicians to back him up or sometimes using preprogrammed electronic accompaniment. Nanna also launched a blog, The City on Film Daily, in which he began a project to record covers of 100 of his favorite songs and post them online, as well as a series of new "mini-songs."