Academy 3, Manchester
31st May 2026
The lost heroes of nineties emo return to the site of one of their greatest triumphs for one more run down memory lane.
The last time Texas Is the Reason played Manchester really was supposed to be the last time. The term emo is often thrown around too lightly these days , but back at that gig, in August of 2013, the years were already brimming in frontman Garrett Klahn’s eyes when he took the stage, let alone when he left it. That was the penultimate show of their farewell tour, the following night’s London appearance intended to be their last performance. Bar a couple of fundraisers for friends in need, the New Yorkers had stuck to that ever since – until now.
Which begs the question of what changes for them to announce a surprise reunion tour for 2026 – albeit without founding guitarist Norman Brannon, who’s replaced by long-time friend of the band John Herguth. It is not that the band have had an unlikely TikTok breakout in the intervening years, and in fact this show has been downgraded from Academy 2 to a still-not-quite-full Academy 3, the same room they played that last show in thirteen years ago. The absence of Brannon also casts a little bit of a pall over proceedings; in an emotional social media post, he explained that to rejoin the group now would be to reopen old wounds, given the trauma he felt as a closeted gay man in an inhospitable nineties punk scene.
In support is Jamie Lehman, the former frontman of Reuben whose solo work has been so multi-faceted that the idea of him playing acoustic should be absurd. It somehow works, though, with the different stylistic threads he weaves through his songs coming together into nearly an impassioned, singular set.
Then, Texas; the instrumental title track to their one and only album, Do You Know Who You Are?, plays over the speakers as Texas is the Reason take to the stage, its melodic guitar line instantly transporting the room back to a particular moment in emo history – it is a symphony in yearning, in longing. What actually set Texas apart, though, was the way they imbued the emo palette with post-hardcore leanings; the opening salvo tonight, which includes If It’s Here When We Get Back, It’s Ours, The Magic Bullet Theory and Blue Boy, sets the tone – punchy, effervescent tracks inflected with the punk that the band grew up with. Album opener Johnny on the Spot, meanwhile, is reinvented here to include the first verse of The Stone Roses’ Waterfall.
They rip through the songs at pace, but frankly there is no other way they could. There’s no way the band could ever phone these songs in; they demand every last drop of feeling out of those performing, and especially Klahn, who is on typically impassioned form. The lyrics he wrote as an angsty twenty-something still resonate on a universal level today, something helped by the fact that Texas were such masters of the push-and-pull between melodic guitars and anthemic choruses, something especially apparent on Dressing Cold and The Day’s Refrain. Klahn dedicates the soaring A Jack with One Eye to “anybody who’s ever lost somebody”, but it’s perhaps Antique, from the band’s self-titled 1995 EP, that’s the true set highlight; it is everything good about the band in microcosm, broiling with nervous energy and palpable heartbreak.
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Texas Is the Reason can be found at theirFacebook|Instagram|website.
They play Glasgow on June 2nd and Dublin on June 3rd
Words byJoe Goggins: find him on Xhere
Photos byTattianna Tibbetts|Instagram
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