7-inch of the year

Cheap Girls vs. Lemuria
Split
No Idea Records

(Editor's note: The sad fact of the matter is that I have a very demanding job which leaves me very little, if any, time to write blogs. I restarted The Midpoint with the hopes that simply having dominion over a small slice of the web would guilt me into regular posting. Several months later I see that isn't the case, sadly. I will do what I can, starting with my favorite thing to write about, new(ish) music! I don't care that it's almost March of 2012, I'm going to write about my favorite albums of 2011 in alphabetical order by band name.)

Allow me to put aside my facade of critical impartiality to say that these are two of my favorite bands on Earth at the moment and that this split was my favorite piece of wax in all of 2011. Not only that, these are two of my favorite guitar players AND three of my favorite songwriters actively making music right now and there was little chance I wouldn't love this album. Two tracks on the Lemuria side and one on the Cheap Girls side left me begging for more. Not only that, but two of the three tracks have been recorded as excellent Nervous Energies sessions acoustically:

Lemons:


Pure Hate:


The Dinosaur Jr. influence in both of these three-pieces is readily apparent, but it never overpowers the unique sounds they've worked hard to develop. Sheena Ozella shies away from the solos but amply fills the sonic space with layered fills and rhythm playing. Cheap Girls' Adam Aymor will give you the solos but never to the point where the free but structured meandering of the vocal melody leaves the spotlight. We'll get to Lemuria's 2011 full length offering soon, but we'll still have to wait a bit for the next Cheap Girls album. This split has done much to make that wait more difficult.