Diarrhea Planet / Those Darlins
Live At Pickathon
(Easy Sound Recording Co.)
I’ve caught Diarrhea Planet live once before, and they are quite the band to see. Three loud heavy guitars, fueled by three greasy longhairs whipping their mops back and forth is a nice touch to the type of guitar-worship sub genre that most of their songs seem to convey. I guess I’m just a sucker for catchy stuff that shreds. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised with this live split record. Diarrhea Planet did a great job capturing their live energy on record, and I almost prefer a good portion of these live versions of the songs compared to the originals. There’s a much more raw energy to how these songs sound.
Those Darlins started off pretty strong on their half, but it quickly grew dreary after the first few songs. They’re a good band. They sound like The Buzzcocks boned X and had a pretty well-raised, honor roll kid. However, the quality of the songs live failed to live up to their recordings. They’re just the kind of band that does better sounding lo-fi. I will tell you this though, the last song almost made me stop listening to this EP entirely. (Alex Petralia)
