By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring a massive split from Avec Plaisir, Champagne Colored Cars, Fox Lake, and Narrow/Arrow and Aunt Katrina’s minimal noise pop record HOT!
Avec Plaisir / Champagne Colored Cars / Fox Lake / Narrow/Arrow – MORE FRIENDS THAN FANS
Genres: Emo, Math Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Microfilm,” “Fracture”
Year of the split, baby.
Montréal’s Avec Plaisir already appeared on the modest THE ULTIMATE EMO ALBUM with fellow Really Rad Records signees Celebration Guns and Swiss Army Wife; now, they’ve teamed up with three of the other most underrated bands in today’s emo scene: Champagne Colored Cars, Fox Lake, and Narrow/Arrow. In classically self-deprecating fashion, it’s called MORE FRIENDS THAN FANS—and it’s great.
Each band fits together well and lends the project a sense of cohesions than most splits, even good ones, often lack, but each band also has their own identity which keeps the whole thing from feeling rote. All four emphasize bright, mathy riffs and chipper hooks; where Avec Plaisir tends to deemphasize the mathy aspects of their sound, using them to provide flavor rather than honing in on them, Champagne Colored Cars brings more of a jazz flair, particularly on the lounge-emo “Microfilm.” Fox Lake’s take is the fastest paced, both their tracks constantly pushing forward and lending the split a sense of momentum leading into Narrow/Arrow’s airier, string-kissed contributions. It all has the flow of a single artist’s LP, with natural peaks and valleys. Pick it up on Bandcamp. [Zac Djamoos]
Aunt Katrina – HOT
Genre: Noise Pop
Favorite tracks: “Choir,” “When I Go Away,” “Sunday”
After the Pittsburgh noise pop band feeble little horse went on hiatus last year, their dueling guitarists each got to work on new projects. While occasional vocalist/guitarist Sebastian Kinsler started playing live as Find My Friends, Ryan Walchonski got to work on HOT, the debut for his project Aunt Katrina. While Walchonski’s equestrian roots are visible––the stringy, clean guitars or garish, synth-esque guitar parts from feeble little horse’s last release, GIRL WITH FISH, carry over here––Aunt Katrina embraces hints of experimentation and newness in Walchonski’s comfort zone.
Best of all is the fractured, robustly sample-oriented “Choir,” a wonderful, nearly instrumental snippet. Anchored in a choppy, sharp drumbeat courtesy of Snail Mail’s Ray Brown, things commence with looped windchimes and a chopped choir sample, regularly shifting and disorienting in exactly two minutes. Those experimental touches get worked into HOT with expertise, like the metronome clicks of “Sunday” that erupt into fuzzed-out, Full Body 2-esque power chords. “Sunday” works handsomely as an opener, as it reveals acoustic guitars and Walchonski’s hushed vocals. “Guess it’s true / I’m not good to you,” he sings, sheepish but surprisingly sweet for the intense backdrop.
HOT is a relatively minimalist release compared to Walchonski’s typical wall of sound in feeble little horse. The open space on songs like “When I Go Away” or “Get Me Out of Bed” wears their downcast mood on their sleeve, especially when the latter flares into a drum and bass groove halfway through. The closer “Let Me Go,” with its warbling, unaffected guitars and laidback, programmed drums, nearly recalls feeble little horse’s first EP, MODERN TOURISM, where the group was still finding their footing. But it’s in Walchonski’s fragmented, mantra-like lyricism that these songs thrive, discovering the power in repetition. As he sings “I want something new to get me out of bed,” that broad, universal sentiment finds a life of its own. You can grab it over on Crafted Sounds’ Bandcamp! [Ethan Beck]
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