Labels: discern direction
Review by: Andy Malcolm
The cover is so glossy! Its so damn glossy! I never saw such a glossy 7″ cover, its really sexy. Danny Baker used to have a phone in subject called “Irrational Turn Ons”, where people would say things like “a new quire of paper” or “warm toast” or something daft. I think I shall phone him up when he returns to air on Monday 17th October, and tell him “the cover of the Polar / MMotM split!” and Baker will say “I have never heard of such a thing” and throw me off air before asking people to phone in under the subject “How nuts is your mother?”.
Oh yeah, there are bands on here. Lets see. Mass Movement of the Moth go first and this sounds like a completely different band to what I have heard before. Much more developed and mature. They drive through a pair of drawn out efforts, starting off with some keyboard over the slower paced guitars and then introducing wrought vocals before it all goes San Diego on our arses, combining Swing Kids spazz outs with Witching Hour quirks. If this came out in 1999 they would be total Spocks, they bring the sass but don’t over do it, and that keyboard evokes a time long gone when this style of music was thriving. The second song has a quiet build up before it riffs a bit in a 90s emo fashion which caught me off guard after the skramz of the first song, but after that sombre start they suddenly start bellowing hoarsely for the final minute. Solid.
Polar are on the other side. I wasn’t really impressed by their demo but these 2 songs hit the right spot (I am presuming neither was on the demo, if they are I guess I just changed my mind!). They play slightly mathy emo type jawns that slides in comfortably somewhere between Stop It!! and Maximillian Colby. First up is “cgsoms”, the vocals are kind of frantic and shouted, whilst the guitars create a warm, repetitious melody that builds up the song – you can feel it waiting to burst out. Somewhere along it switches from the first song to the second, I still haven’t quite figured out where, it feels like one long song. I really like the sung backing vocals in the second part, they are buried in the mix yet somehow really prominent. Heh.