Engagements & Mt. Oriander - Post Marked Stamps #7
I bought this from the merch table of Mr. Mt. Oriander, Keith Latinen, after seeing his set as a member of Parting. Latinen, better known as a former member of Empire! Empire! I Was A Lonely Estate, didn't have any Parting CDs, and I knew I was going to fill up on vinyl at Jerry's and at the Mr. Roboto Punk Rock Flea Market in Pittsburgh later that week, so I grabbed the only CD that was available at the table.
This is some pretty good midwest emo. Not midwest emo revival, that East Coast college basement party music phenomenon by and for the nerds who could outdrink the jocks. I love that stuff. I was in a band playing that stuff. But this isn't that. Even when it gets intense, it never reaches two-stepping territory. There's no singalongs. The Engagements songs sound like Penfold, maybe a little bit of Planes Mistaken for Stars. The Mt. Oriander songs don't sound unlike EE(IWALE), they just sound more like Rainer Maria, poetic and less punky.
The tracklist jumps between Mt. Oriander and Engagements every over song. The Mt. Oriander songs all range from okay to good. They can feel like they're sacrificing rhyme and feel for literal storytelling at times, but there are some cool images there, like the extended forest-husbandry motif on "Fear of Missing Owl". I think that Engagements benefits from being a band rather than a solo project, they have some really cool guitar solos on "36" and overall swing harder than the Mt. Oriander cats (or single cat, overdubbed, as it were).
Unfortunately, Soul America Records really lets both bands down with anxiety-inducing CD packaging I've ever seen. The CD, which is overlaid with a brown and grey grid, is housed in a thin envelope of transparent plastic with a gauze backing. That envelope is folded inside a folded piece of pink construction paper. Engagements lyrics are in Japanese and Mt. Oriander lyrics in English on the inside of the paper. A separate printer paper insert contains Mt. Oriander lyrics in Japanese and Engagements lyrics in English. There's also another insert that contains all the lyrics for a completely different EP. The construction paper is only folded in two places. Everything falls out the bottom unless it's housed in the floppy plastic bag that it all came in. It's taller than every other CD case on my shelf and constantly at risk of creasing or bending if I move it. It's so flimsy and disposable and it looks like ass on my shelf. It makes me less interested in putting it in the CD player. I definitely would have preferred a Parting CD to this, but at least it introduced me to Engagements.