Carissa's Wierd - "Die" 7"

Carissa’s Wierd – “Die” 7”

Hardly Art, 2010
Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2010
Price: $1

It’s sad that Carissa’s Wierd is now mostly known from the “featuring members of Carissa’s Weird” tag applied to Band of Horses records. That wasn’t a problem for the first Band of Horses record, or the second one really, for that matter, but now that Band of Horses are trying to be Kings of Leon and it’s only Ben Bridwell (Mat Brooke quit after the first one) and well… But I guess they don’t do that anymore, since Band of Horses is its own thing and Carissa’s Wierd is now that band featuring members of Band of Horses. Good lord that was confusing. Anyway, I found out about Carissa’s Wierd because I loved that first Band of Horses record but ended up loving CW (gonna refer to them as CW from now on because MS Word makes it incredibly hard to properly spell the bands misspelled name. Not to be confused with the CW) more. The quiet, break-your-heart bedroom pop was like a womb for me. I’m pretty sure I got this on Record Store Day, but if that’s not the case, I’m pretty positive it was issued to promote a CW career retrospective issued by Hardly Art in 2010 (the comp was called They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave, which is etched into the margin here so there’s that). “Die” is a little more bombastic than my favorite CW jams (read: “A New Holiday “November 16^th” cue the strings, no more sad songs need to be written after THAT one. Sheer perfection) but the percussiveness of the pianos and the strings that sort of weave their way in and out of those begging-for-mercy Jenn Ghetto vocals, man oh man. The B-Side “Sharin’ a Hole” is more subdued and features Brooke on lead vox but is just as good and I should mention, the thing CW did best (besides write the saddest songs you’ve ever heard) was harmonize. Goddamn could Brooke and Ghetto harmonize. Both songs have their fair share of THAT. Oddly enough, both of these songs were culled from two separate compilations (I Before E and Scrapbook), so maybe it’s perfect that they share this hot pink vinyl. Awesome little seven, and at a buck, what a damn steal.