Lemuria / Off with Their Heads

Lemuria and Off with Their Heads wouldn’t be the first bands I would think should be paired together for this series, but their different style, demeanor, and, hell, cover choices, makes this seven-inch even more appealing.

Lemuria tackles the Pixies’ "Alec Eiffel," and while it may be blasphemous to some, Lemuria’s verison is essentially more Pixies than the Pixies verison. Where the Pixies’ Alec Eiffel has a more distinct `80s sound (though it came out in 1991) Lemuria’s is much more punk-based, the original school of thought of the Pixies. Of course, it helps that it’s sung by Lemuria’s Sheena Ozzella, who is a fantastic vocalist and has one of the most attractive voices in punk. Lemuria’s pace of the song charges ahead in a more guitar-driven way, and where the Pixies version fades out, this builds up into an aural mess (in a good way) like the Ergs!’s "Upstairs/Downstairs" and slowly dies down, giving the whole track the room to breath that the Pixies never gave.

Attractive singing is not how I would describe Off with Their Heads, but that’s precisely one of the reasons why this version of the Nobodys’ "Scarred by Love" is definitive. Where the Nobodys' song is fairly clean-sounding and Ramonesy (is there even bass guitar?), Off with Their Heads is absolutely vicious and loud, shoving the lyrical content down your throat. The Nobodys want you to pogo with a group of friends while OWTH want you to pogo in a leather jacket with a PBR in hand, spilling it on a bunch of assholes you don’t like. At the risk of sounding terribly corny, Ryan Young actually sounds like he was scarred by love, and does so in what couldn’t be more than 75 seconds.

What else is there to say? Seemingly opposites attract and make two fetching covers.