This split 7” co-released by Folktale and Tiny Panda Records features three tunes by Foot Ox and another three by Splinter Cake, both Portland-based groups. These six whiney, ultimately throwaway, twee songs were all recorded in a Tempe, AZ bedroom in 2008.
Splinter Cake’s opener, “Colorado Springs,” is the only tune that deserved to poke its head out of the bedroom walls of the studio, but even it is questionable given how hard it sucks on the already blood-sucked corpse of early-90s North American college rock. The next track makes a strange transition into unlistenable joke-rap, unashamedly delivering annoying kindergarten rhymes and wanky beats. The Side A closer returns safely to dated college radio slop, but this time with the addition of a few emo tropes: a yell-a-long and that familiar chord breakdown that’s meant to be anthemic but no longer is.
The voice of Foot Ox’s lead-singer Teague Cullen, which mixes equal parts Kimya Dawson and that annoying little kid from Jerry McGuire, is excruciating. If the seven musicians who contributed to these three Foot Ox recordings are under 14 years old, perhaps a reasonable argument from cuteness can be made. In the end, this split might have some value for immediate friends and family, but the rest of us should pay no mind. 3/10 --
Elliott Sharp (18 August, 2010)
