Jane La Onda / Size Queen - The Spectacle / Buy Buy Buy

Included a download code / insert
Edition of 250

Okay, let’s get our big secret out of the way immediately. Kassie Carlson — she-devil of helium-attack vocals with Guerilla Toss — is both Size Queen and Jane La Onda. Thus, this split LP is nothing more (or less) than a display of two of Kassie’s many known musical personalities. And it is a listening experience as haunting as it is haunted, as coolly weird as it is weirdly cool.

Size Queen presents a suite of synth-pocked bedroom pop that sounds to me like the dream-state of a young girl whose favorite robot dog has run away. Maybe for good. Gently blabby munchkins try to convince her that everything is gonna be okay, and she kinda swallows it. I thought it was a little weird when the dog started singing what I took — at first — to be a Sonny & Cher cover, but Size Queen didn’t seem to notice. Yet, she yearns.

Jane’s side, which was previously released as a Feeding Tube cassette, is cleaner and clearer in its poppic aspirations. Driving busy synth lines are woven into bright vocals that alternate between robo-talk and gal-chorale. The results are not unlike certain new wave giantesses of ages past, but their shadows are so frightening I cannot recall any of their true names. But even though these lasses shall remain anonymous, the keyboard sound here recalls some very specific antecedents in spots — namely Jeff Lohn’s work on Theoretical Girls’ “U.S. Millie” and the anonymous spoot on Snakefinger’s cover of Kraftwerk’s “The Model”. It’s jumpy, plumpy and good.

Just like Jane. I mean, The Queen. I mean, Kassie…uh…

– Byron Coley, 2014
SIZE QUEEN / JANE LA ONDA

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