Joan Of Arc/ Bundini Brown - Split

Unfortunately for Joan of Arc and Bundini Brown, I'm trying to review their album immediately after a little office Les Savy Fav marathon/dance "party" which has probably set my standards for anything following it to impossibly high levels, but I'm a professional and shall persevere with open-mindedness and objectivity as one always must...Actually, this is pretty good. The first JofA song is a kinda fairly straight Eastern-sounding indie pop type number. It's nice. Then there's some evocative atmospheric music over a George W. Bush sample which is pretty interesting. Made me smile, anyway. Then 'For the Skinheads and Hippies', kind of a psych-folk number that feels a bit half-written like one of Woods' less memorable moments, ends abruptly for this side's highlight 'You say Tornaydo and I say Tornahdo', which has a weird cut up melody and talky vocals a la Van Pelt if they were on Anticon or some shit. It really works. There's some totally disjointed backing vocals and it's just a brilliantly awkward little slice of mutant pop. The final track is back to conventional indie rock with a pretty little tune called 'Kissinger's Lament when some Young Bunny or Bildeberg Whore Kicks him Out of Bed for Snoring'. I've not really been listening to the lyrics but maybe they're, like, dead subversive or something. Keep on changing the world, guys! Flip it over and we've got Bundini Brown, best known as Tortoise's Bundy K. Brown. He's done a side-long cover of 'All World Cowboy Romance' by Mission of Burma on guitar with loops and reversals. Basically a big long guitar meditation not too far removed from that lovely Black Eagle Child album we got in last week. The first half of it is, anyway, and then it ventures into drone territory. Totally nice throughout, though. I'm into this. Totally different from the JofA side, too. Bit of a mixed bag of an album really, but that tornado song on the somewhat hit-and-miss Joan of Arc side is total mixtape fodder.