Labels: hey presto! – Yellow Ghost Records
Review by: Danny Parsons
I’m pretty sure that this is THE record that I have been most eagerly anticipating this year (thus far). This split contains music by arguably two of the best Aussiemo bands of recent years and boy oh boy does it deliver!
Up first is Eucalypt, and to be quite honest I’m surprised by their choice of songs for this split. “In Circles’ is their first track and it’s pretty long as far as their material goes (just over 5 minutes me thinks); the first couple of minutes is nothing special but about halfway through it really gets going and I can think of no better word to describe the dénouement than “emotional’. Plenty of textbook screaming over jangly, luscious guitar riffs. Neat stuff. The second track is what puzzles me; this could very well be the last ever release by Eucalypt and of the two tracks on this 10″, the latter one is instrumental! Very confusing. It’s not bad at all mind, it simply sounds like one of their other songs but without vocals “” maybe slightly mellower. I’m not sure I’d let every band get away with this, but hey, it’s Eucalypt (and it’s a pretty good track!).
On the flip side is Majorca, from whom I hadn’t heard much until recently. I’ve gotta say, this is really fucking good. In terms of style (I think Eucalypt are better known than Majorca in most circles so it’s probably best if I let people know what they sound like), to put it simply “” I’d be very surprised if Majorca hadn’t heard of Ampere. Five songs in total and they’re all pretty damn short. Lots of spazzy drums (lots of drum rolls too) and distorted guitars which occasionally lean toward the melodic side of things, but only for a few seconds before getting straight back into a frenzy. I really like the vocals in Majorca; kinda screamy but often bordering on the “emo violence’ side of things. Fine by me.
The only bad word I have to say about this release is that it doesn’t appear to come with a lyric booklet; very nice sleeve design going on though with a little insert thingy. All in all I’d say that Majorca’s side has got the edge on Eucalypt’s “” only by a small margin though, you can’t really go wrong with either side. Anybody who has ever enjoyed these bands “” or in fact any emo/screamo outfits from Australia “” should probably pick this up as it’s a great posthumous testament to how good both bands were while they were still active.