Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) - Mountains for Clouds - Two Knights - Driving on City Sidewalks - split - 7

Labels: Count Your Lucky Stars
Review by: MH

This is a 4-way split 7inch from Count your Lucky Stars on a kind of see-through turquoise-coloured vinyl. It kicks off with Empire! Empire! (I was a lonely estate) who are firm favourites of mine and a popular band on this website. They open proceedings with a new song which is a typically excellent twinkly indiemo number. I love the lyrics (“But we haunt just a mile away/Tracing the faded white paint from a cross country track meet”). At a little over two minutes long it’s pretty much a massive tease – I mean, is one song ever enough by this band? The other three bands are all new to me. Mountains For Clouds are up next and style-wise they are not drastically removed from Empire! Empire! (What’s the done thing here? Do I have to type the whole band name out again including the bracketed bit?). Their track, “œDoes It Antimatter?”, starts off fairly upbeat musically and then there is a rather splendid longish instrumental bridge before the vocals come back in. Again, lovely and melancholy lyrics. Two Knights are a two piece from Texas and they offer up a track called “Solo Swimming”. They are a bit more mathy, twiddly and shouty with raspy vocals. Driving On City Sidewalks have the last word on this split. Their track is quite gentle with understated, haunting vocals. It’s pretty good – nice and miserable-sounding. They remind me of Arrows on the strength of this one song. Very nice split.