#46 - Lemuria - The Distance is So Big

Lemuria - The Distance is So Big

Bridge 9, 2013

Lemuria is one of my Minnesota bands. One of the bands I listened to obsessively while we were living up there that, even though they’re from Buffalo, I still associate with long bike rides around the lakes, drives over the Mississippi on my way to work at the Half Price Books in Saint Paul, and blaring from my computer speakers alone in our apartment while Jenny was at work. My taste was changing a little in 2013 and I was revisiting a lot of the pop-punk from my teenage years looking to get  back to basics. Lemuria took that pop-punk sound, married it to indie-pop, and yet all of the songs took surprising turns. Sheena Ozzella’s vocals wouldn’t be out of place in one of the K Records twee-pop bands from the 90s, but it’s also commanding (and an excellent contrast to Drummer Alex Kerns’ deadpan vocals). The bands 2017 release Recreational Hate is a fantastic record and an honorable mention, but The Distance is So Big wins out because it feels like a celebration. It also has “Brilliant Dancer” which was my runaway favorite song of 2013 and just put that thing on and try not to get sucked in. Usually when a song takes you on a ride it’s a 7-minute epic (see: Neko Case’s “Curse of the I-5 Corridor,” Destroyer’s “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker) and Lemuria shifts the song half a dozen times in about 3-minutes and somehow it feels...cohesive? Somehow, someway. Give the track a listen and if you’re not sold I don’t know how to help the dark lump of stone in the place where your joy should be.

Lemuria - Pebble

Lemuria – Pebble

Bridge Nine, 2011

Acquired: Lemuria Mail Order, New, 2013

Price: $13

Though Lemuria’s latest—2013’s The Distance is So Big—is the finest, most perfect distillation of what this Buffalo trio is capable of accomplishing (so far), Pebble was my first love. It’s a good thing, too, because one of my favorite things about Distance was admiring the band’s growth between albums. There’s a nice contrast, and that absolutely does not mean that Pebble is a substandard record. It’s fucking fantastic! It’s just not as cohesive a record. That said, the songs on their own are perfect little gems that glisten with punk rock energy and an incredibly smart knack for playing around with song structures and melodies and utilizing these tools to give each song its own flavor. There’s the big, poppy-punk bliss of the soulful second track “Wise People” and the energetic burst of “Pleaser.” “Ribcage” has this sweetness woven into it by Sheena Ozzella’s gorgeous vocals and Alex Kerns’ plainspoken vocals not only provide a fine counterbalance to Ozzellas, but give the heartbreaking tale of sexual abuse on “Bloomer” its gravitas. Like its follow-up, Pebble is infinitely listenable and even after non-stop listening last spring; it is a pleasure to spin this on some random morning before work. I can’t say enough nice things about Lemuria. They were my favorite discovery of 2013 and I can’t wait to see what comes next. 

"Wise People"


"Pleaser"

Lemuria - Get Better

Lemuria – Get Better

Asian Man Records, 2007

Acquired: Mississippi Records, Used, 2013

Price: $4

 

Another rock solid find from Mississippi Records (have I mentioned that if you’re ever in Portland DEAR SWEET JESUS GO TO THAT RECORD STORE ALL OF THE HYPE IS TRUE!!!!!!!). Everything’s coming up Lemuria, apparently, because I now own all of their albums on Vinyl after falling in love with the band just a few months ago. Excluding their split with Kind of Like Spitting, Get Better is Lemuria’s first proper LP and it’s fucking wonderful. It’s more raw than Pebble or The Distance is So Big, but the most enchanting thing about this band has been watching them (pun inititially unintended but now fully intended) get better album after album. The songs here are more fully realized than those on Your Living Room’s All Over Me and Sheena Ozzella’s vocals are less chirpy and more soulful. The vocal interplay between Ozzella and songwriter/drummer Alex Kerns clicks a lot better here than on that aforementioned split. It’s just dreamy hearing a band come into their own. The fact that it’s on Asian Man Records, a record label that dominated my punk rock years, makes me dizzy with delight. It’s a fitting label for Lemuria’s idiosyncratic brand of pop-punk. It’s barely pop-punk though. Outside of some big power chords and heartmeltingly great hooks, Lemuria have apparently been hard to pigeon hole from the outset. The songs are both blissfully poppy, sobering, inventive and almost deceptive in their emotional resonance. The way these tracks sneak up on you and stick with you is a testament to how fucking good this Buffalo, NY trio was from the start and I’m almost scared to see how good their follow up to The Distance is So Big is gonna be considering that that album is almost definitely vying for the title of my favorite album of 2013. Get Better is prophetic in every sense.

"Pants"

Lemuria/Kind of Like Spitting - Your Living Room's All Over Me

Lemuria/Kind of Like Spitting – Your Living Room’s All Over Me

Art of the Underground, 2006

Acquired: Mississippi Records, Used, 2013

Price: $4

 

Everything happens for a reason. Or something like that. While I’m no diehard fatalist, I am often infinitely creep out by the way the universe thrusts things into my hands. Though the time I spent at Portland’s tiny yet absolutely brilliant Mississippi Records was brief, I managed to find about five awesome records. This Lemuria/Kind of Like Spitting split is something I’ve been trying to track down since I first got into Kind of Like Spitting about five years ago. I couldn’t find a download of it anywhere. I recently recommitted myself to Kind of Like Spitting and Lemuria’s latest LP The Distance is so Big totally blew me away. So finally acquiring this split fees a bit uncanny.

It’s odd hearing Lemuria’s early stuff. If I hadn’t heard The Distance is so Big, I’d still get down on these six tracks, but I’ve got a different appreciation at work given that I know how this band is going to morph into one of the most compelling indie rock bands of the present. There’s a lot more pop punk elements (mostly heaps of power chords), and Sheena Ozzella’s vocals are extremely raw and borderline chirpy, but the off kilter song structures are present in an amoebic state and it is apparent that the germ of this band, the little core of their being, has always been a wonderful listen. Though Lemuria’s lyrics often have a heaviness about them, it’s so obvious that this band is having a whole hell of a lot of fun making something old new again.

Though this split features the dawn of Lemuria, it consequently features the twilight of Kind of Like Spitting. Not to say that Ben Barnett’s songs here are bad, more like I’m just bummed he basically quit making music after 2006’s The Thrill of the Hunt. The songs here are of the refined, emo-leaning variety that populated the late Kind of Like Spitting albums and removed from the quieter, more lo-fi bent of his earlier stuff. “Why I Smoke Mad Weed” and “Afraid of Crushes” are standout representations of Barnett’s latter day work which incorporated his distinct guitar work and pained vocals with affecting tales of misery. Kind of Like Spitting make the most of their five songs on this split and it’s a nice surprise from a band that never really made a cohesive album. I love that I thought “You I Seek” sounded a whole hell of a lot like the Thermals only to check the liner notes and IT IS BASICALLY A FUCKING THERMALS SONG! Awesome. So awesome.

Lemuria - "Hours"

Kind of Like Spitting - "Why I Smoke Mad Weed"

Lemuria - The Distance is So Big

Lemuria – The Distance is So Big

Bridge Nine, 2013

Acquired: Mail Order from Lemuria’s Website, New, 2013

Price: $14

 

I really don’t think 2013 has produced a better song than “Brilliant Dancer.” I’ve listened to that song a hundred times and I’m sold. Song of the Year. Hand’s down. No one else even comes close. Jenny loves it too, and I often find her singing it around the house, in the car, etc. It does everything right. It’s got a breezy intro with Sheena Ozzella’s pleasing vocals before Alex Kerns’ drums pummel their way in and the chorus totally sweeps you away. It’s like being on a boat, rolling with the waves. Imagine the empty heart meter on a video game getting filled to the brim. And the thing is, I’d be totally content with the song if it just repeated the verse and chorus for two and a half minutes, but halfway through everything switches up and Lemuria do everything they can to make it sound like a totally different song while keeping it rooted to the first part of the track. The pianos come in on the refrain of “brilliant dance dance dance dancer” and punch it into your brain and Ozzella, despite having those beautifully plain not-a-singer-singer vocals reaches absolute transcendence after that first refrain. This is what pop punk sounds like when it grows up, and it’s exhaustingly great. And that is the first fucking song on the record. What follows is the sort of tour de force that restores my faith in indie rock. This band is wonderfully inventive and has so much depth, and yet they still seem to be having a lot of fun. The hooks are like pure joy. The vocal interchanges between Ozzella and Kerns is playful and effective, and it’s one of the most replayable and straight-up fucking enjoyable albums I have had the pleasure of listening to in 2013. 

"Brilliant Dancer"

"Scienceless"

"Oahu Hawaii"

Note: Every time I listen to this record, I pay a little debt to Nick Spacek, who has been responsible for introducing me to three of my favorite albums of the year via his blog Rock Star Journalist. Of all the people on earth, he is the person whose taste in music I implicitly trust the most. So while the Internet is great for letting you listen to anything you could ever want to listen to at any time, I still find it refreshing to navigate that morass of MP3s via the recommendations and/or blog post nudgings of a friend.