Wednesday, July 9, 2014

CASSETTE REVIEW: A Million Squeeks Will Do You No Harm “split (w/ [V])”


            On the Bandcamp page for this release, there are two photos- each with a different image of a person on it- and so I wonder if the one I got is a picture of the artist behind A Million Squeeks Will Do You No Harm, whereas the other is a picture of the artist behind [V], which I might have gotten as a cover should I have acquired this cassette through him instead.

            In any event, this is a great split scenario of one artist I’ve heard before and one I have not yet.   We begin with A Million Squeeks Will Do You No Harm”, and there are three tracks on here, two of which appeared previously on the Bandcamp page for AMSWDYNH.   Rather than give the play by play for each song, let me just say that the first track has this great ability to build.  

            It is layered, and each piece comes in on top of the other before it finally takes a turn for the ambient.   The second track reminds me of Spaced Invaders and the third goes back to the closer feel of what is going on in the first.    It is really just a fascinating piece of music that, coupled with the “Blue EP”, has made me a fan of AMSWDYNH and I shall now seek out all music related to that name and give it a listen. 

            On the flip side, we have simply [V], whom I cannot find on Bandcamp because, well, you try searching for a single letter and see what happens.   This is a bit different from AMSWDYNH, but I still enjoy it.  There is acoustic guitar strumming and vocals on the higher pitched side.   It’s the Weakerthans or Benjamins, slightly punk and twee, maybe an acoustic version of Hunx, but then it also gets an electric guitar riff in one song that can be somewhat psychedelic.   There are also many qualities to this that mirror the Get Up Kids on their “Walking on a Wire” album, and I’m cool with that.

            What I like most about this split is that you have two artists who are fairly different, almost at opposite ends of the spectrums in some ways, and yet this works because they are just both so good and what they are doing.  





No comments:

Post a Comment