Moros Eros, Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiousity

I guess in this age of everything-anytime, I shouldn’t be real surprised that a band from deep-rural Georgia (Acworth, according to the Myspace) sounds so, well, urban. Moros Eros’s Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiousity betrays only a teeny-tiny hint of the band’s Southern upbringing (on the disjointed, kinda odd “Old Friend”), instead aiming for a hybrid of Nu-New Wave electro-pop with emo dynamics and frantic energy.

It’s a bit of a split-personality disorder, really — on tracks like “Wake and Wait,” Moros Eros is a dead ringer for the Killers, right down to the Duran Duran-esque whoa-oh-ohs in the background, while album kick-starter “Quit, You’re Being Thoughtless” pulls out a chiming guitar and defiant, yelled vocals that sound like they’re right off Braid’s Frame and Canvas (I mean that as a compliment, by the way).

Sometimes they blend it nicely, like on “Pride And Joy,” which combines both sides of the band’s style — post-rock guitars and Rapture-ish electronics — into a bitter, acidic fuck-you of a song. At other times, though, like on the aforementioned “Old Friend,” it just doesn’t fly, sounding repetitive and not particularly captivating. But hey, the band definitely hits the mark more often than not; on top of “Wake and Wait,” “Pride And Joy,” and “Quit, You’re Being Thoughtless,” you can also add “On My Side” (love that organ, y’all) and “Choices” to the “win” column, and that ain’t bad.

Oddly, the band these guys remind me the most of aren’t anything like them stylistically. They sound like all the above people, certainly, but I keep coming back to To the Confusion of Our Enemies-era Riverboat Gamblers. Which is weird, yeah, ’cause these guys definitely aren’t what I’d call punk rock. Moros Eros do mirror that band’s exuberant rawness and smash-it-all-to-pieces attitude, which, heck, probably makes them more genuinely punk than a ton of “real” punk bands.