Image courtesy of Communicating Vessels
It’s very much what you would expect from the debut release of a band that’s finding its niche. I don’t mean that they’re searching for an identity, because they definitely have that. But they haven’t yet found the best way to show it. There’s a lot of good elements here, but for the most part, they haven’t put it all together yet.
There’s too much going right to simply write them off as “just another indie rock band”. For example, there’s the menacing reverbed bass intro to “Stay Late,” which unfortunately sets the tone for an EP we didn’t get. Or the loungey, dreamy guitar on “I Don’t Care,” perfectly complimented by some jazzy percussion. What I’m getting at here is these guys are really good at their intros. Unfortunately, for most of the EP, the vocal performance is lacking. On “Stay Late,” the higher vocal register doesn’t quite mesh with the bass-driven instrumental, and “I Don’t Care” has a melody which is far too wordy for its own good. There’s also a sort of coda to “Stay Late,” but it doesn’t really flow very well out of the rest of the song, and it’s not fully formed enough to stand as its own song.
While the first two songs were more or less mixed bags, it’s on closing track “Nasasaw” where the whole band finally seems to be on the same page and stay there. Though I don’t like the guitar quite as much as I do on “I Don’t Care” or the bass quite as much as I do on “Stay Late,” the two work together much better here. It’s also the strongest vocal performance of the
EP. Even the transition to this song’s coda works well, even if the closing vocal keening doesn’t quite work for me.
6/10
