Andrew Jackson Jihad/O Pioneers!!!

Split EP

If both Pulp Fiction-inspired cover art and the idea of a 9-inch record (you read that right) isn't incentive enough to pick up this Andrew Jackson Jihad and O Pioneers!!! split, then the music should hopefully do the trick.

Andrew Jackson Jihad are appearing on roughly their fifth split in two years(!), but they're not running out of ideas quite yet. The folk-punk duo kick off the instantly hooky opener “This Is Why I'm Hot” with the self-defeating admission, “Sometimes I feel like a dead man.” Like many of the band's jams, it's a hard-jangled acoustic number with some extra elements (a playful little solo, some vocal “ooo”s, vague rolling noise below the surface). “¡Esto Es Lo Quiero!” is indeed a Spanish-language, fast-paced intermission with retro production that could have come out of a Mexican restaurant in the '60s. The stripped-down “We're All Gonna Die” is a bit of a musical and lyrical throwback for the band themselves, sounding like it could have come from their bare-bones Plan-It-X scene of yore.

O Pioneers!!! (on this recording, featuring AP scribe Sam Sutherland on percussion) kick up the ruckus with their more raucous brand of scorched-vocal punk rock, propelled forth with their usual jagged melodies. “Get Rich or Die Trying Part 2: Forever” adds another 50 Cent reference to the proceedings, and has a sick, unexpected tempo change near its beginning that brings everything to a screeching halt. Frontman Eric Solomon snarls his reflections of friendship fallouts on the hooky “Oak Island,” while “Party Time, Yeah” makes its case with slammed, sludgy stop-starts. These tracks are less immediately catchy than their other material, but they're just as insistent and driving, and retain the band's gravelly, As The Eternal Cowboy flair they've vibed on since 2009's Neon Creeps.

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O Pioneers!!!’s “Oak Island”