Land of Blood and Sunshine EP on Whoa! Boat Records

Whoa! Boat Records, out of Seattle sent in one of their latest singles from the Land of Blood and Sunshine, which is maybe how you would describe Iowa, where these guys are from and I'm getting a real children of the corn, weirdo vibe from this 4 track EP.

The A-Side's "Prestroy" has a couple of dueling interwoven slightly tremolo guitars paired up doing a crazy Abe Vigoda rhythm, going slightly mathy until this evil chorus comes in almost angelic chanting about 'we'll come out of the forest looking for the relics that they left behind'. It's a soundtrack for Rosemary's Iowa baby, in that creepy evil key. A bit like that movie trailer go to O Fortuna, it has that epic feel, all over this pop, complex pace, and very much some kind of warning to the townspeople.

Next up is "Bring me Thunder", this one starts right off with a pretty dense layered home recorded instrumentation, broken guitars, handclaps, stomping, tambourines...the vocals this time could be pitch shifted up a bit, ween style, for an extra creep factor. These are some kind of little fairies, or wood people asking for the thunder. They have an interesting take on this folk psyche sound, it's almost turning into a Blueberry Boat for me. There's a larger narrative that's fantastical, these tracks are from this storybook world...well, one of those warning to children stories. Wasn't Grimms fairy tales basically a warning against molesters and adults?

The B-side starts out with "Fog Beat", which is driven by this warbly guitar or sitar sounding melody...maybe synth? More creepy voices, beady eyes, little hunchbacks bouncing around down the trail. They aren't up to anything good. An electric kicks in and the rest of the creatures join in the chorus. The rhythm is hectic here and poly-rhythmic...they're clearly experimenting with some classical, primitive elements in this bard's tale.

"Phlegm" has those two guitars back, in an acoustic form this time, playing separate complex rhythms, in more of this medieval folk sound. The vocal verse is punctuated by huge drum and metal object crash sounds, a garbage orchestra sound launching the whole thing forward into contemporary folk, a sot of big gypsy Beirut sound. The whole thing takes a rest for a measure with a low tom roll until that chorus crashes in again.

Great comic illustration sleeve by the band, includes a download code, 100 on orange, 200 black.

They also were recently featured on Daytrotter, so you can go download that before picking this up from Whoa! Boat.