Punk is the New Snow Music: Lemuria and Kind of Like Spitting Split LP

This week’s winter storm gave me a great opportunity to return to the traditional listening of Echo & the Bunnymen as the snows thickly fall. You can read the full story at an old posting of admiration for 1987’s eponymous album that became for me the music most closely associated with snowstorms.

The storm hit our portion of Wisconsin on Sunday morning, and while most people did not come to church, we were still holding services. I opted to snowshoe to church while listening to Echo & the Bunnymen, all of the old reminiscences appearing before my eyes in the falling snow.

However, this winter storm also marks a new tradition. After leading Sunday School and preaching, I returned home to 4-6 inches of snow that needed to be cleared from our sidewalks and driveway (before the afternoon and evening would bring the next band of storms). So I replaced Echo & the Bunnymen in my CD player with Your Living Room’s All Over Me, a 2006 split from Lemuria and Kind of Like Spitting.

While this split album has relatively little to do with snowstorms—although it is released by Buffalo, New York’s Art of the Underground (Buffalo being a king for snowfall), the garage punk chaos really energized my snowblowing and shoveling. As the bands attacked their songs, especially in places like Lemuria’s “Bugbear” where guitar wails seem like aural skateboards doing drop-ins on a halfpipe, I’d pause, do an air guitar wail, then dig back into the snow.
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It all starts in the basement for the Living Room, although a good deal of the time is also spent in the bedroom. The liner notes from Lemuria and Kind of Like Spitting talk about how punk rock begins in the basement—basement shows, independent clubs, sleeping in people’s guest rooms—and that’s the feel you get from the music. However, as you’re hanging out in these basements, you’re also hoping that this music, this true music will rise to the top. Maybe it’ll become a rooftop party, the crowds gathering in the streets, everyone clamoring for a better view of these bands that are letting loose a most awesome set of sounds. (I know, it’s an imagined scene inspired by a U2 video, but you get the idea).

Lemuria comes with Pixies chiming, whining guitars, a comparison strengthened by the Kim Deal-like presence of Sheena Ozzella’s vocals. However, as the songs bounce with a little more pop (thanks to keyboards from guest Tony Flaminio), the Primitives and others also come to mind. What charges the air for Lemuria are the rhythmic jumble from Alexander Kerns (drums) and Jason Draper (bass) who don’t just let the punk wash rule the day. Kerns breaks things down with an almost jazz-like set of fills, while Draper propels the bass lines which are equally ready for pogoing and pop swaying.

“Lick Your Lips” comes prowling slowly, hunched with a certain melodic elusiveness, and as Kerns takes lead vocal, he confirms that elusive air. “I don’t want to explain my songs,/…If it was something I wanted to tell you,/I would have already done so.” Lemuria is definitely in the basement art conversation of the struggle between creating something artful versus making something accessible.

Kind of Like Spitting comes with Ted Leo garage rock, the art guitar of Heros Severum, and a way of interrupting the flow just enough to make you think they’ve absorbed Pere Ubu. KOLS can be as tender as the cracked voice balladry of “Team Reasonable,” but then can go into a chant fury as on “You I Seek.”

Thanks to Lemuria, Kind of Like Spitting, and Art of the Underground for the review CD.