Squirrel Bait

Squirrel Bait
Concert flier for a Squirrel Bait show at Tewligans
Background information
Origin	Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Genres	Post-hardcore punk rock indie rock[1] emocore
Years active	1983–1987
Labels	Homestead
Past members	Peter Searcy David Grubbs Brian McMahan Rich Schuler Britt Walford Clark Johnson Ben Daughtrey

Squirrel Bait was an American punk rock band from Louisville, Kentucky active from 1983 to 1987. Squirrel Bait's dense, moody, melodic hardcore sound, featuring pronounced tempo shifts, foreshadowed the grunge sound of the late 1980s as well as math rock. Squirrel Bait, along with Hüsker Dü, are often noted as precursors to the emocore ("emotional hardcore") sound that arose from the D.C. hardcore punk scene with bands like Rites of Spring, Beefeater and Fugazi.

Squirrel Bait signaled the second coming of American punk – bands of little brothers and sisters who got to grow up on Black Flag and Hüsker Dü without a preparatory course in Supertramp. ... Like a hundred other little Düs across the country, Squirrel Bait managed to make a couple of records before spintering off to form five more bands. Unlike most of that punk rock loam, the members of Squirrel Bait chewed up their legacy and shat out something curious and consequential.^[2]