Labels: salinas
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Cripes, a veritable torrent of good music is bursting the banks of the pop punk river in this year of our lord (Blake Schwarzenbach) 2005! I certainly can’t fathom it. Two new bands on this here split, and both find me in high spirits and enjoying their pair of songs.
Karate for Kids fire out the gate on this 7″ with two rough efforts that score highly with me. They even have a song entitled “Albert Belle” about the city of Cleveland, what a lovely character ole Bert was. K4K play fast and melody packed stuff that teeters on the edge of drunkeness and will surely appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Dillinger 4, Latterman, Crimpshrine, the Gibbons, half of No Idea’s output for the past 1000 jahre… I could go on. The vocals are cracked and a little hoarse from shouting (and boozing?) so much. “It’s Krueger Dumbass” is similarily ramshackle and tinnily recorded, it has some great slower melodic parts where the sung vocals wobble over the guitar which makes it sound a very little like Cap’n Jazz. Sound!
Frame was even newer to me than K4K, but they rock even harder in my opinion. Their first song, “Lesser”, is just a killer slice of indie/punk that I reckon sounds like Anklebiter (sorry, only 2 or 3 people reading this will find that reference anywhere near useful), lots building, melodic riffage and two dudes who can’t remotely sing (though they do some good D4-esque shouting) just being sloppy and generally any good. Second song continues the badly recorded but dashedly good rocking.
Really fine split!