Split with Andrew Jackson Jihad

ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD are mammals who perform music. At their core they consist of two members, Sean Bonnette (acoustic guitar) and Ben Gallaty (upright bass), though they often employ other vertebrates in order to enhance their live shows and recordings. Some of their music can be described as "sad songs sung happily," and okay fine, folk-punk [description stolen from interpunk.com].

the ghost mice are hannah and i from operation: cliff clavin/the sissies/the devil is electric/disarm. i play guitar and harmonica (a little) and hannah plays violin. you can call us folk punk if you must. we just consider ourselves to be a punk band that plays acoustic. i think it's very punk to play acoustic "OI"-me. we don't use mics or amps when we play live. OI, OI!

If we were to take Andrew Jackson Jihad's latest effort at lyrical value alone, we may suggest a suicide hotline for the folk/punk duo comprising Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty. Because we begin visualizing disenfranchised youth snorting coke off a tombstone while reading the Jihad's lyrics, Edgar Allan Poe, or some other depressive goth poetry. "Let Us Get Murdered" ("Let's go to sleep and never wake up/Let's find a loophole out of this") and "Unicron" ("I'd like to build a giant machine/That crushes the mountains and burns all the trees/And pees in the desert and dries out the seas/And melts all the ice caps and makes nature bleed") aren't, obviously, the most uplifting songs. But with energized acoustic accompaniment and Bonnette's raw vocal performances — which are toned down and accessible compared with the band's previous album, Issue Problems — there's a healthy and easily digestible vibe in the tracks, which are all under three minutes each. The 16-track full-length is a split with Bloomington, Indiana-based Ghost Mice, who bookend the album with eight positive tunes of stripped-down folk/punk with an acoustic guitar and violin. Recommended for the gleeful and the morose.

1 Little Prince (Andrew Jackson Jihad)
2 We Shall All Die Alone Someday
3 Forest Fire
4 Let Us Get Nurdered
5 Lightning Bolt
6 All The Dead Kids
7 Unicorn
8 Power Plant
9 Oh Me, Oh Me (Ghost Mice)
10 The Moon Will Rise
11 Song For Tomorrow
12 Survival
13 Cementville
14 Critical Hit
15 This Heart Of Mine
16 Please Quit Smoking Mom