Labels: Everything Sucks Music
Review by: MH
This is another split where I’m familiar with one of the bands and not the other. T-Shirt Weather are new to me and will inevitably have me mixing them up with Better Weather in a few weeks time but for now my focus has me remembering them correctly. The first song gives a good indication as to what they are about. They play ramshackle pop punk/indie with offbeat lyrics and dual vocals sung in a North East accent. Sometimes a saxaphone (or what sounds like one) appears. Comparisons to other Durham bands like Martha and, to a lesser extent, ONSIND, wouldn’t be far off. They have cool song titles too and really come into their own on the last two tracks with the storytelling style of “What More Did You Expect From These Chords?” and the singalong nature of “Penny, You Are My Constant”. The latter moves away from pop punk – it is mid-paced and has more than a touch of Ace Bushy Striptease about it.
Losing Sleep are a Kingston pop punk/emo/indie band blurring all those lines together. I’ve seen them a few times and they’ve been better each time – most notably, recently at Power Lunches in London playing with Troubled Sleep. I’ve also got their demo on the computer and while I enjoyed it they hadn’t quite got me fully hooked yet. However, these three new songs go some way towards doing that as they have really stepped things up. There is more energy and melody, more drive to the rhythm section and better songwriting on the whole. “This Is My Dillon Now” is my pick of the three songs. Really impressed.
Cool split – contrasting styles of pop punk but both equally interesting and enjoyable.