3 out of 5

Label: Polyvinyl

Producer: Varies per track

Cute.  This 2 x 7″ collection pairs some bands from the JOA ring for some scattered exclusive tracks.  Your appreciation of this will, of course, depend on how much you like the individual groups, as it doesn’t really work as a sampler – these songs ain’t designed for singles.  Except for Make Believe, the artists featured here tend to work better in ebbs and flows, so, stripped of that, I would consider this more of a collector’s thing.  The sequencing also makes it a bit wonky, as it saves the more upbeat stuff for the second 7″.  Thus, if you’re listening in order, it’s slow going until midway through.

Artist by artist: We start with The Love of Everything – Bobby Burg from JOA – who have always been entirely too precious sounding to me, and they continue that trend with their tracks here.  And you get two of ’em!  Good for you.  There’s nothing overly notable about either song, but again, my ears aren’t really down for it.  However, compare that to the Owen track on Side 2A – Owen is also generally too precious for me, but even though this song for this compilation still is precious, it’s a more fleshed out composition than I’m used to from the artist (AKA Mike Kinsella of… JOA), so I can appreciate the track even though I still won’t be buying an album any time soon.

Back to Side 1B, though, for our actual Joan of Arc track.  JOA has littered the lands with 7″ and random songs here and there, but as you could consider the groups mindset as the core from whence all else here flows, that ebb and flow is most evident with them.  Sometimes they’ll settle into a groove that works as an individual song, but not for this track.  It’s too minor of fare to really grab attention, and needed to be bundled with a good juxtaposing track to make it work.  Unfortunately its between the two twee groups I just talked about.  OH NO!

But we do wrap it up with the manic wonky of Make Believe (Nate Kinsella and friendzz) who manage to stir up a frenzy of keyboard and guitar on almost every song.  Yes, bias, ’cause I dig ’em, but out of the two tracks committed here, one is the bee’s knees, the other one is groovy but is up and over after one line of lyrics and one minute, so do with that what you will.

What Sam Zurick will is contribute a 40 second “secret” track (not listed except for the band’s initials) under the moniker People Dick.  Who knows what’s what with this little group-chant stomp, but it’s a fun way to wrap things up.

Nothing bad here, but nothing required