Wet Zoo EP

Ace Fu

Annuals' MySpace

Annuals' Official Website

If not, it’s okay, because family trees aren’t nearly as important as the music. Besides, any listener will be able to tell the bands apart; in fact, I can imagine the A/S crew getting off on the idea of uninitiated listeners assuming these are two completely different bands. And musically, they really are.

Annuals specialize in acoustic arrangements, with a folksy, bucolic mood permeating the music. This is what one expects music from North Carolina to sound like—and I mean that in the best possible way. Meanwhile, Sunfold is the Annuals’ swaggering, adolescent sibling who steals his older brother’s guitar rig and turns everything up to eleven—and I mean that, too, in the best possible way.

Annuals’ first song, “Sore,” begins as a delicately plucked ballad about longing: “On the brightest of days / you’re three states away,” Adam Baker sings. This soon explodes into a galloping chorus interspersed with banjo and long violin notes that occasionally dip endearingly out of tune over a stop-and-start breakbeat. The effect is Morricone by way of The Decemberists, and it’s intoxicating. The large-scale narrative and sonic palette of the Annuals’ songs fit right in with other big, ambitious line-ups like Cloud Cult, The Dears, and the aforementioned Meloy & Co.

Stream "Sore" below:

A split EP has the inevitable side effect of forcing a comparison between its two bands, no matter how they both labor to present a unified front. This effect is probably only heightened when the bands share a line-up: it’s a rock version of Who’s Mom’s Favorite?

If forced to choose—and no parent should have to—I’d say the Sunfold offerings here are more exciting and immediate. They do not contain a single wasted note. The drums are tight, the guitars are razor-sharp, and the verse patterns follow the catch-and-release campaign favored by so many '90s bands, from the Pixies to Failure. The heroic guitar harmonies are unashamedly indebted to Steely Dan; the song structures recall the proggier elements of post-punk as perfected by The Dismemberment Plan or Shudder To Think.

Wet Zoo’s last track is “Watering Pail,” a multifaceted rallying cry with about seven different sections, three of which could rightly be considered choruses. “Memories lined the street last night / so I took my watering pail,” Kenny Florence sings against the chase-sequence urgency of sixteenth notes on the hi-hat, as vocal harmonies and tremolo guitars abound. At the end, the song collapses into a space-rock jam in 3/4, and Jeff Buckley’s ghost pays a visit as Florence ends the song by crooning, “Those people / they get what they deserve.” It’s the perfect consummation of both the song and the entire EP, and proves conclusively that if Sunfold is a provisional side project, it deserves a shift toward the center.

Stream "Watering Pail" below:

COMING UP: Annuals perform on Friday, June 13th at the Varsity Theater with opening act We All Have Hooks for Hands. 5 p.m. $10. All Ages.