plit albums make a great deal of sense for independent bands - the financial load is split, fans of both bands are likely to buy it and hopefully cross-pollinate, and if you only care to listen to one of the bands, it’s easy to just turn it off after their songs. It makes further sense that these two bands would combine – they have relatively similar statures, they offer up derivations of Midwestern post-rock, and they played some shows together. The main difference lies in how they use their requisite post-rock musicianship.


Volta Do Mar is in the camp of vaguely jazz-influenced post-rock bands originating out of Chicago. Seeing their live set-up establishes their approach if not their aesthetic – drummer Tony Ceraulo sets up at the front of the stage with his back to the audience and the other members face him; it’s a veritable circle jerk of talent! If you’re expecting finger-tapped guitar leads, double bass interplay, occasional hushed vocals, and an abundance of time signatures, you’re on the right track. Their four songs are a mixed bag, but taken one at a time, like this record mandates, they seem less pretentious than the band’s live performances, even if they’re not entirely successful.


“On a Hand Held Sky” is textbook Volta Do Mar: the slight tension is the only differentiating factor between it and some of the arpeggio love affairs of Pele. The ten minute “Fall out of Cars Fall out of Night” is baffling; between the bizarre Eric Johnson derived shred of a first crescendo and the final burst of a pre-apocalyptic Explosions in the Sky melody, there’s a genuine dynamic approach established, but reconciliation of these elements is close to impossible. The other two Volta Do Mar tracks are close to throwaways. “Ready Broken Finger” could be a great moment in a song, as the gentle vocals and whirring keyboards buzz overtop of solid rhythms, but it never goes anywhere. The brief “Search Lights Burn the Cornfields Bright” is an attempt at traditional songwriting that works better in concept – “let’s make a mildly country song with prominent vocals” – than in execution. They’re talented, yes, but too often that’s all that’s going on.


Murder by Death, the former Little Joe Gould, has quickly garnered a reputation in the Midwest as one of the more dangerous live acts endlessly roaming the plains. It’s not that Murder by Death’s blend of post-rock dynamics, drama a la the Cure, and macabre fixation on drinking till the apocalypse comes doesn’t translate well on record, it’s just that there’s no conceivable way to have Vincent Edwards, the spindly keyboard player, come to your home and breathe fire dangerously close to your head when the chaotic crescendo hits its fever pitch. Their records do have one advantage over the destructive live sets, though, and that’s the ability to include moments of echoing grace that would seem downright contradictory in the face of burning cymbals. This grace is afforded in “Canyon Inn, Room 16,” as the band’s cello and piano turn away from the dark side for a respite and couple with the filtered shoegazing guitar impulses to create an inviting eye of the storm.


Their other tracks come closer to their namesake and fill their horror film fetish, particularly the aptly titled “We Watch a Lot of Movies,” which comes closest to the soundtrack aesthetic for one of the “waiting for something terrible to happen” scenes. “Knife Goes In, Guts Come Out” takes a skittering drum beat and applies it to a poisonous narrative, allowing the song to ebb and flow as its protagonist slowly dies. “A Masters in Reverse Psychology” is the most focused of these songs, a drinking song for the Armageddon. These tracks aren’t quite as good as the bulk of their debut full-length, Like the Exorcist But More Breakdancing, but the application of varying songwriting aesthetics to the solid musicianship is still a success, and thankfully the feeling of being dick-slapped with talent never arises.


Congealing their respective styles is the ultimate challenge of this disc, and the decision to alternate the artists’ tracks rather than lump them together in halves makes this particular crucial. While a flow does develop at points, a mastering problem on this pressing of the disc in which Volta Do Mar’s songs are considerably louder exacerbates the largely incongruous jumps between the bands’ tones. Overall, existing fans of either band will find enough here to make up for the tracking issues, but if you’re a newcomer to both, Like the Exorcist But More Breakdancing is much stronger than this split.