Oh Sees Retrospective #17: Moon Sick EP

I'm starting to think the universe or fate or god or whoever or whatever is following my actions closely. In the last retrospective I briefly mentioned Radiohead, and I came to find out after finishing it that they recently started an online archive containing all of their material to date. This includes albums, singles, promo videos, documentaries, outtakes and rarities...the veritable whole shebang. In a past life I was obsessed with Radiohead (my main email address still has their name in it) and this kind of news would have had me climbing up the walls with excitement. True, I am curious to tuck in someday, especially some of the more obscure EPs and singles I've never heard. The important takeaway is that I appreciate how some bands realize their hardcore fanbase can never be satiated. And while Oh Sees may not have their material all available in one place, they do understand that prolificacy and number of releases doesn't always mean flooding the market. Oh Sees consistently surprise us with things like An Odd Entrances and the recent The 12” Synth release, so newer fans might not be aware of some of the older treasures to plunder.


As mentioned in the last retrospective, the Moon Sick EP followed Floating Coffin by a mere three days, coming out on April 19^th, 2013...Or did it? The Oh Sees Bandcamp page says it came out on the 19^th, but all other information I've found indicates it came out on Record Store Day, which was the 20^th. Insert obligatory 4/20 joke here. Anyway, exact release date doesn't matter—the point is, it came out so close to its parent album that it was a huge surprise. Now, sure, it is just four leftover songs from the Floating Coffin sessions, and they definitely wouldn't work if you tried to insert them into the album.* Due to this you might assume it's just scraps that fell off the table for we, the hardcore, to pounce on and devour like we're starving orcs. Yet I think it's a bit dismissive to say they're just four leftover songs. Yes, this EP isn't as coherent and cohesive as the usual full album or a mini album followup like An Odd Entrances—but this isn't necessarily an indication of its overall quality.


In a shocking twist, revisiting the Moon Sick EP so soon after finishing the Floating Coffin retrospective has helped make it clear to me why I don't love that record. There's a hard to explain quality I notice in some the best Oh Sees albums, something I can only describe as a sense of being unhinged, of going for it, of being gonzo and not striving for perfection. By contrast to this EP, even when Floating Coffin does get weird or unhinged, it comes off as still being polished, in control, and orderly. It really does feel as though the 'crazy' stuff was set aside for this EP. Just a thought.


Moon Sick blasts the fuck out of the gate with 'Grown In A Graveyard.' After asking “are we rolling?”, Oh Sees unleash an absolute beast of an opening track, all off-kilter drums and queasy synth sounds and pummeling bass. John Dwyer is in classic form, his vocals swallowed up in the chaos swirling around him as his guitar is absolutely coated in delay and effects, firing off tracer rounds toward the moon. This is followed by 'Sewer Fire', a midtempo rager that splits the difference between krautrock trance, psychedelic noise, and garage rock furor. Listen closely at the end for a snippet of Pink Floyd's 'Money'--why it's there, I have no idea, but it's part of the gonzo spirit, maaaan. While I know it's then-collaborator Lars Finberg handling vocals on 'Sewer Fire', I bet most people, like me, forget this and think it's Dwyer up to this old tricks. If you've never listened to this EP before, you may still have heard 'Humans Be Swayed', a fan favorite that is sometimes played live (if I recall correctly, there's a live performance on YouTube, with Ty Segall on drums, no less!), which to me has always seemed like a modern cousin to Warm Slime's 'I Was Denied' in terms of an ear worm melody/vocal and rollicking energy. We end the proceedings with 'Candy Clock', which is such a strange detour both from Floating Coffin and the previous tracks of the EP that I love it. Between the harpsichord, the viola, the “la la la” vocals, and the whimsical 60s British orchestral psych-folk aesthetic and lyrics, this track is a hidden gem. It's so...perverse putting a track like this at the end to balance the other songs. I adore it; being gonzo doesn't always mean cranking the volume and distortion, after all.


As with other lesser known non-album releases from Oh Sees, Moon Sick is the kind of deep cuts/outtakes release that rewards hungry fans for their persistence and their hunger. Yes, it's only four tracks and yes, it's Floating Coffin leftovers. Yet it speaks to the consistency and quality control of this band to not only not shoehorn these songs onto the parent album where they wouldn't have worked, but also to have the foresight to release them in an all-killer, no-filler EP format. Here they can shine in the sun and not be relegated to a dark cutting room floor somewhere or swallowed up in a singles collection. Moon Sick is a special treat for fans, and I'm excited they keep doing stuff like this to (maybe I'm making an assumption here!) reward the faithful.


*Though if some enterprising person wanted to propose a 'fan edit' that combines the two releases, I'd be ever so curious what they come up with.

Destroyer- Archer On The Beach EP

After hearing Archer On The Beach, I feel confident in saying that no one quite makes music like Dan Bejar. He comfortably fits into two stylistically different side projects/supergroups: the power-pop of the New Pornographers and the experimental indie rock of Swan Lake. Yet when it comes to his band, Destroyer, it's increasingly difficult to pin down where he's going. His last two albums, Destroyer's Rubies and Trouble In Dreams, perfected and began to ossify his mid-60s-Bob-Dylan-meets-70s-David-Bowie style. Then, for last year's Bay Of Pigs EP, he seemed to toss everything out the window and begin anew. The title track was a 13 minute synth-pop/groove-rock marathon, with plenty of ambience and detachment that carried over more overtly in the other song, 'Ravers', a remake of the song 'Rivers' from Trouble In Dreams.

With Archer On The Beach, Bejar has taken his music to an even more fractured and atmospheric direction. Whether this will be the predominant style on the forthcoming Kaputt album is unknown, but it has certainly raised my expectations and curiosity about it. The two songs on this EP were collaborations with ambient/electronic artists Tim Hecker and Loscil, the latter of whom is the drummer in Destroyer, and who had previously contributed some kind of remix or remake to the Destroyer's Rubies vinyl release. Anyway, Archer On The Beach is interesting because it's arguably not a Destroyer release to begin with. Bejar contributes only lyrics/vocals while the music is entirely from the other two musicians. It seems odd, then, that this was released under the Destroyer name, since other than Bejar, none of the Destroyer band members appear. Well, Loscil does, but he appears under his ambient/electronic name and not his real name as he does when drumming for Destroyer. Confused yet?

The title track of this EP plays like a morose ballad, with lightning storm sound effects, crowd noise, and echoing keyboards creating a foreboding atmosphere that never quite goes anywhere but never feels repetitive. 'Grief Point', meanwhile, is either a remake or reworking of the Loscil song 'The Making Of Grief Point', on which Bejar had appeared. I'm pretty sure it's the same vocal take, and to confuse matters further, the Merge Records website description of this EP says that 'Grief Point' was the original working title of a song called 'Bay Of Pigs.' Whether that was the same 'Bay Of Pigs' from the last EP...well, who knows? Destroyer has so often remade or retitled his songs, and his discography is chock full of meta-references, that it feels futile to figure it out.

What I do know is that Bejar must be going through some kind of artistic crisis not unlike what Sufjan Stevens seems to have gone through over the past four years. Again, according to the Merge site, 'Grief Point' was the first song Bejar made after deciding to never record again. Is this statement hyperbole? Seeing as how the title of the forthcoming album is Kaputt and the cover features the Destroyer band near a cliff (possibly the titular Grief Point?), seemingly considering whether they should jump or not, it strikes me as appropriate that this song seems to be about how he doesn't care about making music any more, and by extension, how pointless making any art is. It's also his first spoken word performance as Destroyer: “I have lost interest in music...it is horrible,” he intones, before the sound of a drink being poured jokingly(?) follows. All the while, the music is nothing more than some unobtrusive synth sounds that are just barely more accompaniment than pure silence, as well as some musique concrete stuff, such as dogs barking and the sound of Bejar shifting in his seat.

It's hard to say how true this spoken word piece is, since Bejar has made a career of writing about all sorts of characters and situations that he has no personal stake in. Is he just messing with us, or is he serious about quitting music? Either way, this EP is a fascinating listen, albeit not a wholly satisfying one. I feel like all of Bejar's releases are key pieces of his mystique, but where Bay Of Pigs was engaging and enjoyable, Archer On The Beach is too given over to ambience and atmosphere, and a questioning of his creative impulse, to feel substantial or rewarding. Had this EP been released under a different name, or with top billing given to the two other artists involved, I may have been more lenient. As it is, though, Archer will only interest the Destroyer faithful, and will only satisfy about half of those.

3 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Sufjan Stevens- All Delighted People EP

Last Fall, Sufjan Stevens embarked on a relatively small tour during which he played a good deal of new, unreleased material. I saw one of these shows, and it was somewhat shocking to see him play as much electric guitar as he did the acoustic instruments I associate with him. Songs would carouse into extended fusion jazz blurts from his backing band or elongated guitar solos more akin to say, Built To Spill, than anything he had done before. Last Fall also saw the release of The BQE, Sufjan's symphonic work; in his own words, an attempt to get beyond pop songwriting, which he saw as his “greatest weapon.” So, with those concurrent developments in hand, the biggest surprise to me about this EP is simply its sudden release. After half a decade had elapsed since any new music from the man (The BQE aside, which is a different beast entirely), it was odd to wake up one day and see that he had a lengthy EP available for download and streaming.

Weighing in at eight songs and nearly an hour of music, it's odd that All Delighted People is considered an EP and priced as such. Only $5 for so much new Sufjan music?! What a deal! After a few listens, though, it becomes apparent why so much is available for so little. This EP is a hodgepodge of disparate music, all of it a notch or two below Sufjan's other work. Five shorter, more traditional songs jut up against three, uhm, different-beasts-entirely. To say it doesn't hang together or feel of a piece is an understatement. All Delighted People feels like a sweeping-of-the-table before the forthcoming The Age Of Adz, which, judging by the recently released song 'Too Much', sounds very little like this EP. One gets the feeling that Sufjan has been aimlessly puttering away in the studio over the past couple years and figured he might as well release the results before his “real” next batch of music hits. I could be wrong, of course, but Sufjan's releases have always had a crucial unified feel and flow that All Delighted People utterly lacks. Illinois was pretty varied, yet it works as a whole. Its track ordering and flow are impeccable. All Delighted People is, to quote 'From The Mouth Of Gabriel', “a very big mess.”

What's more, this is a real downer of an EP. I recall thinking that Sufjan seemed a bit bummed and out of it at the concert last Fall, and he's made comments in the press for the past couple years about how he didn't see a point to making albums anymore. Consequently, most of these songs seem given over to post-break up depression and apocalyptic dread. I never agreed before when people said that Sufjan's music was sad and defeated, or his voice whiny, but it's hard to listen to 'The Owl And The Tanager' and think otherwise. With minimalist piano backing and some vocal echo, he recounts a tale of some kind of love gone wrong, tied up in odd symbolic bird imagery, ending with the line “one waits until the hour is death.” Character sketch or harrowing personal tale, there's no symbolism to 'Arnika', bearing a refrain that sounds like a suicide note: “I'm tired of life, I'm tired of waiting for someone.” These shorter songs aren't awful, but they remind me of the kind of artless, going-through-the-motions poetry I used to churn out when I was depressed in high school and college. Compare even the best of these songs to his past work and the difference is stark. 'Enchanting Ghost' has some of his worst vocal work to date, with a rushed, strained delivery that sounds as if he wanted to finish as quickly as possible because he had to piss.

Elsewhere, those different-beasts-entirely sound like the experiments they (probably) were. 'Djohariah' is unforgivably long even if it does feature the bracing electric guitar soloing that impressed and surprised me at last Fall's show. Yet as guitar solo showpieces go, it's a long, long way from any of the old classics, and possesses the constant feel of building to some payoff or peak that never comes. Save the seventeen minute version for concerts, I say. Meanwhile, the two versions of 'All Delighted People' bring in the apocalyptic aspect I mentioned earlier. They make decent use of some borrowed lyrics from Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Sounds Of Silence' and the “original version” is probably this EP's most successful attempt at doing something new. It expands and contracts over its eleven minute run time, bringing in choral voices, malfunctioning noisy electric guitars, an orchestra, and a brass section, all topped off with an orchestral ending reminiscent of both the famous Psycho shower scene music and the speeding up cacophonous part of 'A Day In The Life' by the Beatles.

In my review of The BQE, I concluded that it was “neither terrible nor a complete triumph; neither essential nor forgettable.” It's odd that I wish I could say the same about All Delighted People. Many modern artists are using the EP format for music that, while not necessarily better than their albums, is at least almost as good as their albums. I paid what is essentially a standard album price for the Water Curses and Fall Be Kind EPs by Animal Collective on vinyl, and I don't regret it one bit. I don't normally bring up prices in reviews since they're largely irrelevant, but I feel like $5 is the absolute maximum you should pay for All Delighted People, even for a vinyl copy. Its experiments aren't terribly successful and the older style songs are sub-par. Here's hoping that new album I've been longing for back before even my BQE review proves he hasn't totally lost it.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Cocteau Twins- Echoes In A Shallow Bay

For all the power and emotionally affective qualities that instrumental music can have, I still think the human voice is the most beguiling and spellbinding instrument. This is something that is underscored for me whenever I listen to bands who sing in other languages, or even bands that make use of wordless vocals. Sigur Ros comes immediately to mind. The Icelandic band primarily sing in a made up language that nevertheless proves to be capable of making a listener feel certain things with only an implicit, personal understanding of what the song “means.” A more esoteric example is Panda Bear's Young Prayer album, which is made up almost entirely of his wordless vocals and acoustic guitars. Even without knowing that it was recorded in the wake of his father's death, it still gets across an elegiac, mournful quality despite having no intelligible English lyrics about funerals and loss.

I bought Echoes In A Shallow Bay on a whim through my job, because I recalled once downloading some albums by the Cocteau Twins but never giving them a fair shake before being distracted by other things. The first time I listened to this EP I accidentally had the volume up way too loud, and something about Liz Fraser's vocals on the lead track 'Great Spangled Fritillary' instantly captivated me. I was pretty sure she was singing in another language, and her simultaneously atmospheric and intense “ohhh ahh” backing vocals immediately brought to mind both Sigur Ros and Young Prayer, as well as a lot of the bands the Cocteau Twins influenced. Shades of their music show up in recent favorites of mine like Beach House's Teen Dream and Grouper's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill.

Echoes and its companion EP, Tiny Dynamine, were (according to Wikipedia) not originally recorded with the intent of release, since the band were merely testing out a new recording studio. Without the context of Tiny Dynamine, not to mention the rest of their body of work, I can't speak authoritatively on the relative quality of these four tracks. But coming from my perspective, if this is the kind of music they record without a release in mind, it makes me eager to track down their better known albums, since Echoes is great. Fraser's indecipherable lyrics, the mysterious artwork, and the dreamy soup of guitars, keyboards, and bass give this music a mysterious, otherworldly feel. 'Eggs and Their Shells' in particular is just out of reach, as if you're drunk and can't quite concentrate hard enough to figure out what she's singing, or even whether you're awake or not.

While the sheer totality of sound is what makes this band so unique and compelling, it's obvious to anyone that without Fraser's vocals they'd be just another pretty good 80s “college rock” band with an atmospheric/gothic vibe. Based solely on 'Melonella', the Cocteau Twins sound as if they have two or three different vocalists, so varied and, yes, beguiling and spellbinding are her performances. While likely not the band's best work, Echoes has proven to be an engrossing and enjoyable EP, and I find it difficult to not just keep flipping the record over and listening to its four songs again and again.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Bay Of Pigs EP

Longtime Destroyer fans should by now be used to Dan Bejar's wandering muse. His stylistic changes aren't as extreme as, say, Beck's, and aren't as (in)famous as David Bowie, an artist whom Bejar is often compared to. Bejar's best known one-two curveball was 2004's Your Blues album, a synth/keyboard orchestral-pop masterpiece, along with the subsequent tour and EP (the underrated Notorious Lightning & Other Works) with the unhinged Frog Eyes as a backing band. Destroyer's next two albums were relatively straightforward indie rock/singer songwriter stuff, so I'd have to assume Bay Of Pigs came as a shock to newer fans.

At any rate, Bay Of Pigs returns Bejar, at least conceptually, to the synth/keyboard heavy Your Blues. But where that album had a purposefully cheap MIDI sound to it, this one sounds clean, slick, modern, and like the work of a full band instead of a single lab rat. Various reviews have described the title track as disco-ish, but to these ears it's more like 80s synth-pop with a good sense of groove than it is some Saturday Night Fever dreck. At thirteen-and-a-half minutes, it also has time for eerie atmospheric intro and outro sections, and lets Bejar go on and on in his 'Tangled Up In Blue'/Dylan-esque storyteller mode, weaving yet more references to characters, places, and events from his body of work, as well as adding some new ones. 'Ravers', meanwhile, is a ghostly remake of the barrelhouse piano based rock of 'Rivers' from Destroyer's 2008 album, Trouble In Dreams. I do prefer the original version, since the words and phrasing style of it feel forced and awkward in this droning, ambient setting. But at the same time, I've never heard a song like this from Bejar before, and his distinctive vocals and lyrics work shockingly well in said setting. It's novel, sure, but not a novelty.

The same could be said for the EP. Whether Bejar pursues this direction for his next album with Destroyer is impossible to say. I hope he does, for whatever that's worth. Well, whatever does happen, it won't change the fact that Bay Of Pigs is a brilliant, challenging-but-rewarding EP.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Moonface- Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums

There was a time in the mid 90s to the early 00s when Chicago was an incredibly prolific and incestuous scene for independent music. Bands freely shared members and put out a lot of material, often as obscure solo or side projects. Even when you thought you had a handle on a relatively well known band like Tortoise, it would turn out that, say, Jeff Parker put out some solo album you've never heard of. Today, though, this kind of cross pollination and proflicacy belongs to the Canadians. It's easy to play "six degrees of separation" with many of the bands since most of them have members who do solo material or serve time in side projects, collaborations, and other bands. Perhaps none of these axes is more tangled and large than the one centered around the Spencer Krug: he is a full time member of Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake and a sometime member of Frog Eyes...oh, damn, he also had that Fifths Of Seven band, too...

And now he has added Moonface to his deck of cards. Presumably a solo affair, this EP is possibly connected to an obscure 7" put out by Krug's Sunset Rubdown band titled "Introducing Moonface." As if to combat any complaints from fans of his other bands, he not only released this as Moonface but also with a completely honest, literal subtitle: the only instruments used on this 20 minute single track are marimbas and cheap sounding drums.

For fans (I'm tempted to say "scholars," considering how complicated Krug's discography is), the Dreamland EP will be little more than an interesting, inessential experiment. Often artists can produce amazing work within self-imposed limitations, and Krug has proven he is sometimes at his best with little to work with: 'Child-Heart Losers' from Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover is devastating in its simplicity. But while the long tracks on last year's superb Dragonslayer worked through several sections, focusing on different instruments or atmospheres, this EP is limited to the aforementioned two instruments and is double the length of even that album's longest song.

Unfortunately, Dreamland makes for a monotonous and trying listen for the Krug faithful and a baffling, pointless exercise for non-fans. There aresome good moments here or there during the track's 20 minutes, but there are also too many parts where the same marimba pattern cycles for the 20th time and you wonder if he's putting you on or not. Since this EP was initially a "pay what you want" download in the now standard Radiohead In Rainbows mold, it makes me wonder if this was something Krug dashed off as a personal challenge and thought it was worth releasing as a obscure curio for the hardcore. Even as much as I love Krug, though, I wish he had taken the ideas and sections and turned them into shorter, full fledged songs instead of a rambling, often-outright boring single EP-length track. To be honest, I'm not sure this EP is worth any amount of money. I am sure, however, that it's for the completionist fans only and even they will find little nutrition in it.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Album Of The Week: Animal Collective- Fall Be Kind EP

It's surreal to think that it's already been nearly a near since Animal Collective released Merriweather Post Pavilion. I could just be thinking like a solipsist here, but 2009 has flown by, hasn't it? Nowhere has this felt more evident than in the music world, or anyway, the corner that I inhabit and follow. 2009 hasn't had quite as many truly excellent albums as 2008, and at the same time, everyone's already jumped the gun on their "best of the decade" lists and articles. Most of the world seems eager to finish December and be done with this decade, so leave it to the band who helped start off 2009, with what is arguably their best album, to finish it with what is arguably their best EP.

As I mentioned in my review of Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey EP, Animal Collective are one of the few bands who think of an EP as a true venue for expression. They've always put forth the effort to offer fans something interesting and new, instead of just having a glorified single or remix depository. Their first, Prospect Hummer, was a wonderful coda to Sung Tongs with the legendary (in some circles) Vashti Bunyan in tow. People was interesting but inessential, unfortunately offering both a studio and live version of the title track. Last year's Water Curses, meanwhile, was the true proof that very few bands make EPs like Animal Collective. That release was arguably as good if not better than most of Strawberry Jam's tracks, something born out by the fact that I remember the band saying that the EP wasn't so much leftovers and B-sides as it was stuff that just didn't fit or flow well with the album.

The same could be said for Fall Be Kind. Its five tracks neither sound like retreads from Merriweather nor lesser material that was left on the cutting room floor. At a bit over 27 minutes, it's a substantial work with its own sense of flow and atmosphere. The band made some comments about how it was going to be "darker" than Merriweather, and while there is a bit more uncertainty, less obvious song structures, and more experimental textures to the EP, it's still just as poppy and frequently head nodding as the album. The first two tracks find resolution in brilliant samples: 'Graze' has euphoric pan flutes from Zamfir, while 'Why Would I Want? Sky' famously features the first legal Grateful Dead sample, from 'Unbroken Chain.' As for the rest, 'Bleed' is where most of the "darker" talk likely comes from, with its free-floating vocals and almost-sinister synthesizer sounds. The last two tracks are the kind of introspective and philosophical wonderings that the band is becoming synonymous with. 'On A Highway' is a road weary lament from Avey Tare, while the lengthy 'I Think I Can' is about needing to move on, ending with a 'The Little Engine That Could'-style repetition of the line "I think I can" in a vocal harmony that reminds you, once again, how Animal Collective can take an influence like the Beach Boys and make it their own.

In 2008, the self titled album and Sun Giant EP by Fleet Foxes formed an unstoppable duo that were collectively my favorite release of that year. I have no qualms about saying the same for Fall Be Kind. Judged by the EP format, Fall Be Kind is as brilliant, consistent, and well paced as Merriweather is judged by the album format. Forming a kind of unique symmetry, by design or otherwise, Merriweather was the best reason to move on to 2009 from 2008, while Fall Be Kind is the best reason to close the book on the year and begin reminiscing. For what it's worth, if I gave out an award for best EP of 2009, Fall Be Kind would easily win.

EP Round-Up: Grizzly Bear, Deerhunter, & Bon Iver

Grizzly Bear- Friend EP

Friend may be referred to officially as an EP, but it's a dubious designation for two reasons. One, it clocks in at 43 minutes, which is longer than full albums by a lot of bands. The other reason is that three of the tracks are actually covers of Grizzly Bear songs by other bands. Perhaps it's better to think of this as a hip hop style mixtape?? I don't know.

Regardless, the three covers are all generally good and done in the style of the respective bands. I do wish that CSS or Atlas Sound would've flipped a coin so we didn't get two covers of 'Knife', but whatever: I love that song and their takes on it are very different. As for the Grizzly Bear material, it represents a strange nexus between all three of their albums. Their remakes of 'Alligator' and 'Little Brother' are in the more electric, dynamic style of Veckatimest, which is odd since that album wouldn't be released for another year and a half after the Friend EP was. Anyway, 'Granny Diner' is clearly a Yellow House leftover and there's an alternate version of 'Shift' from Horn Of Plenty, so we've effectively got pieces of every Grizzly Bear release on this EP, whether in spirit/sound or actual music. The rest of the material is as hit or miss as you might expect, though I do want to mention that I wish that annoying gap of silence and subsequent rocking out wasn't tucked unto the end of 'Deep Blue Sea.'

While everyone should get the albums first and most people will be content with only those, diehard fans looking for something more--not necessarily something new--will find much to enjoy in this surprisingly meaty EP.

Deerhunter- Fluourescent Grey EP

I have the habit of thinking of bands as a linear progression or story, with a very clear evolution or path toward or away from something. While I probably have forced this structure where it doesn't belong, it seems like more often than not it fits a band. Something like the Fluorescent Grey EP is reason why because it is such an obvious stepping stone between Deerhunter's Cryptograms and last year's phenomenal Microcastle.

Of this release, in an interview with Pitchfork Media, Bradford Cox said: "It's like four singles. I almost feel like we should have saved the songs for the next record...But they're all four singles; they're all four good. They could stand on their own." While I couldn't have planned the "stepping stone" comment any better if I was trying to make him connect the albums, I do want to address the "these are four singles" comment. Mind you, Fluorescent Grey is only four songs, so it's easy to criticize such a release for not having enough material. But in the same way that Portal, the PC game, was so awesome partially due to its brevity, Fluorescent Grey is awesome because it gives you just enough music to enjoy in one burst. Also similar to Portal, the quality of the material is shockingly high. I don't know if I'd qualify all of these songs as singles in the traditional sense of a Top 10 hit song, but in terms of indie rock 7"s or what have you, they could absolutely fly. The first three songs definitely feel like steps toward the more pop oriented Microcastle, while 'Wash Off' is a look back to the by turns dreamy and intense shoegazer-isms of Cryptograms.

Like their friends in Animal Collective, Deerhunter seem to get that EPs can be more than just "maybe a new track or two and some remixes or covers." Fluorescent Grey is an excellent dollop of songs you can't get anywhere else, and well worth the price for casual or hardcore fans.

Bon Iver- Blood Bank EP

If this decade has, for the mainstream anyway, been the decline of the album--due to digital music stores, the ease of piracy, or the way we listen to music nowadays--then it has also seen the resurgence of the single as a viable artistic venue. Since people don't feel bad about spending $1 (or less) on a song (or a ringtone of said song), singles have become a much bigger thing than in the 90s, when they pretty much died thanks to the lameness and expense of CD singles. At the same time, I think the EP has come into its own as an artistic format as well. If you buy digitally, you're still only spending about a dollar per song.

According to Wikipedia, most of Blood Bank's sales came from digital sources. That's pretty much par for the course these days, since the only way I ever end up with EPs is getting the digital version (legally or otherwise) or when EPs are packed in as companions with vinyl records. Maybe it's just a money-to-music ratio, I don't know how I justify it. Anyway, since Bon Iver was one of the biggest stories of 2008, it only made sense that those clamoring for more from Justin Vernon would jump on anything Bon Iver in '09, whether it be this EP or his collaboration with a band under the name Volcano Choir. While the latter will likely puzzle those fans who come to Bon Iver from the singer/songwriter/folk perspective, Blood Bank will be a welcome snack while waiting for Vernon's next Bon Iver album.

Other than 'Woods', with its unique vocoder'd vocals and lack of any other instruments (think 'Because' by the Beatles, but not as good), Blood Bank sticks closely to the For Emma, Forever Ago template. So this EP is a case of "more of the same but still good; not essential but recommended for hungry fans."

Primer Part 0: Radiohead- Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP

This is going to be an awfully solipsistic, navel gazing review for the most part, so if you're just here for the 'consumer report' type stuff, you can skip down the last few paragraphs.

I'm going through one of those 'transitional' periods of life where you look around and realize you're getting old(er), that you have more responsibilities than you ever have; more opportunities have arisen, and every where you look you seem to notice and feel new things. Every person you pass interests you in some indefinable way. You feel as if you could fall in love and meet that next significant other any day. Something about the weather, the way the sun and the sky looks...you feel like it's trying to tell you something but you can't grasp what. At the same time, somehow, you feel trapped, restless. You are suddenly small and confused, the headlong rush of time a terrifying thing. Personally, these sorts of periods always make me long for the seemingly more simple and well-defined times of my past. And since a large part of one of my jobs entails picking over the things that people have donated to Goodwill in order to post them online on their eBay like site--the memories and physical remains of thousands of lives: their toys, clothes, books, records, etc.--I seem to be stuck in a particularly nasty pool of nostalgia. So, I'm finally going back to Radiohead.

I feel as though I've mentioned this in every other review I've written, but Radiohead were the band (and OK Computer was the album) that got me into music on a serious basis. I had liked, even loved, music before Radiohead but they were the first band that truly engaged me as a listener with ideas and complex music that I had to struggle and work at to understand and appreciate. I'm reading Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme at the moment, and when flipping through the book attached to Airbag/How Am I Driving? it occurs to me how it all reads like excerpts from something he wrote. To think that the 13(!!) year old version of me was grappling with those sorts of ideas, and all the neuroses and pre-Millenium existentialism inherent to OK Computer, is kind of mind blowing to me now. I'm not trying to brag, though. Mostly all I did was fill journals with lyrics and awful poems/stories that outright stole or were heavily influenced by Radiohead.

Indeed, there was a span of three or four years where I listened to Radiohead almost every day. More than once, I didn't feel quite right until I had my 'Radiohead fix.' Some weekend afternoons were given over to listening through their discography up until that point, straight through. I can't do that sort of thing with bands any more, not because none of them are as good as Radiohead, but because I like too much music to be so mono-maniacal. Monogamous with women, polyamorous with music. Anyway, since roughly 2004 I've maintained an unconscious distance from Radiohead. I still think they make incredible music (I'll get around to reviewing In Rainbows soon), and the dozen or so times a year I listen their stuff I love it just as much, but I associate Radiohead with a more innocent, carefree time of my life, when I hadn't had any jobs or girlfriends yet. When I was barely writing anything and just starting to get into books and movies. When almost all of my money went to videogames.

For whatever reason I was compelled to bring OK Computer and its sister EP Airbag with me on the commute to work this morning. Maybe it is just wanting to get a small reminder of what life was like for me from 1997-2003, but I'd like to think it's a kind of renewal; a starting over, if you will. I've experienced so much since the last time I seriously sat down with Radiohead's discography and this feels like how I should bring them into this new 'period' of my life. A younger version of me posted reviews of most of their stuff on Epinions.com, and I believe it's time the more measured, nuanced critiques of mid 20s Greg (or is that GregRadiohead??) are brought to bear. Besides which I find all of this reviews embarrassing and amateur-ish. If nothing else, I've become a better writer in the ensuing years. Well, my reviews have gotten a lot longer, anyway.

So, then: Airbag/How Am I Driving? was an EP released after OK Computer, collecting a good portion of the B-sides from that album. The cover indicates it is a "...mini album aimed at the USA", which is record company speak for "here is a stop-gap release because we wanted more product in stores sooner rather than later." Not that I'm complaining, because it would be much more costly to buy all the singles needed to collect these songs. More importantly, the six 'unreleased' songs on Airbag are all excellent. Pavement were a band long said to have very good B-sides but the reissues of their albums have merely proven that their non-album songs were as every bit as uneven as the average band. Radiohead, though, have fantastic B-sides. You can always see why the B-sides wouldn't have worked on the album but you still need to hear them.

I'm not sure how easy or difficult it is to track down a copy of Airbag these days, but if you're a fan of Radiohead, or you just want more music that's closer to the more traditional, guitar based sound of The Bends and OK Computer, then Airbag is worth the effort and expense to obtain. 'Pearly' is a fan favorite with the unforgettable line "that's how/she got her/sweet tooth/for white boys." Instrumental 'Meeting In The Aisle' more obviously points the way to the post-OK Computer era, a dreamy/spacey piece for synthesizer and drum machine that sounds like nothing the band had done up to that point. 'Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)' nods to the multi-part songwriting style of 'Paranoid Android', an unhinged Yorke admonishing the listener to "sell your suit and tie and come and live with me." And the barnstorming 'Palo Alto', which featured so memorably in the Meeting People Is Easy film--was to be the last recorded time we'd hear Radiohead overtly rock out for a few years.

Returning to this EP and its parent album after a few years off, I'm struck at how consistent and satisfying it is. Here is a companion piece to a legendary (for at this point we can surely declare OK Computer legendary) that is almost as good as the main event. Here is an EP of an album track and six B-sides which are far better, have more ideas and more pay-offs, than the entire recorded output of many bands that have flashed bright in the night sky of music since 1998 but had no staying power. Maybe I am just being overly generous because I'm falling back in love with Radiohead. But, no. I have always loved them and always will. Airbag/How Am I Driving? has stood and will stand as a metric for how I judge EPs and 'companion' releases. It is that good.

Boards of Canada- In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP

It's too bad that this EP is usually overpriced and generally unknown because it makes for a pretty good introduction to Boards Of Canada. It doesn't have the sense of discovery that their first EP Twoism did because that was their first 'official' release and was incredibly hard to find for almost 5 years. What it does have, though, is Boards of Canada at their most ambient and languid while still, somehow, making for a concise 24 minute Cliff's Notes version of one of their albums.

Released at a nice middle distance between 1998's stunning debut Music Has The Right To Children and 2002's darker but, arguably, better Geogaddi, the In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP can't really be called a stepping stone release between the two. And it's also not a case of the Scottish duo (recently revealed to be brothers) clearing out the vaults. No, this is one of those rare cases where an EP stands on its own as a musical statement. All of the group's trademarks are here: the 60s/70s keyboards/samplers, obsession with dark/creepy things (most of this EP is given over to allusions to the Branch Davidians), child-like whimsy, and a healthy bedrock of ambient techno a la The Orb.

In A Beautiful Place... is, as stated earlier, Boards of Canada at their most ambient and slow moving. These four tracks still have beats and rhythms, but they are mellow and melodic more than anything else. 'Kid For Today' has a skittering beat and droning keyboards, a narcotic drip of a song that feels like it goes on for 15 minutes but never overstays its welcome. 'Amo Bishop Roden' moves from formless, ethereal chords to a true drum beat before dropping this for an ambient ending. The title track, with the oddly disturbing vocal samples of children and a Branch Davidian slogan spoken by a computer altered voice, is rightfully considered one of the best songs Boards of Canada have ever done. I originally heard this track on the very first All Tomorrow's Parties compilation and it's exactly what made me get into this group. At any rate, its minimalist drum loop, ghostly vocal samples, and synthesizer chords that sound like fog rolling in and out or maybe clouds going overheard on a really windy day...sorry. What I was trying to say was, this is a quintessential BoC song. EP closer 'Zoetrope' has an off-kilter, disintegrating keyboard loop that sounds like a remix of a science film soundtrack from the 80s about astronomy. This is BoC at their most pretty and melodic, and there's something of a child-like beauty and wonder about it, almost heartbreaking in its simple-but-effective sound.

The only real barrier to your entry of this EP should be the price. I've never seen it for cheaper than $7-8 at any store, and it's often more. Though there's a lot to love here--four tracks at 24 minutes isn't a bad meal, musically speaking--I'm not sure it's worth quite that much. However, if you grab it from iTunes or another digital music store like Amazon, it shouldn't cost you anymore than $5. iTunes even has it in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format for $3.96 as I write this. If you're a hardcore fan and simply must have a physical copy, it's good enough to justify $8 or more. The rest of us should be content with the digital copy. And content we will be: In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country is a fantastic EP and a good way to introduce others to this band's unique sound and addictive quality.

Destroyer- Notorious Lightning and Other Works EP

Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar) got away with one of the most fascinating conceits in modern music with his Your Blues album. On paper, I should hate it: an album recorded with synthesizers and keyboards instead of a band. However, the result was a stunning synth-orchestra with some of Destroyer's best songs and arrangements yet. Once you get past the instruments, it's a thrilling pop album. Then, when it came time to tour the album, Bejar pulled another trick out of his sleeve: his backing band wouldn't be a battery of keyboards, MIDI controllers, and sequencers, but Canada's off-kilter rock band Frog Eyes.

Clearly Bejar enjoyed this tour and collaboration, because not only did he issue this EP of studio versions of those live arrangements but also continued to work with Frog Eyes's leader Carey Mercer, most specifically in the Swan Lake project with sometime-Frog Eyes member/Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade member Spencer Krug.

The inevitable question becomes: are these re-imaginings superior to the original?? This is a problematic question for a few reasons. One, it implies that one has to be superior to the other. You can like both the subtle MIDI orchestra of the Your Blues album and the reptilian brain-stem distortions of Notorious Lightning. Two, the question can be taken on a case-by-case basis. I prefer the surging, guitar powered 'An Actor's Revenge' to the original, but 'The Music Lovers' fares better as a delicate sip of synthesizer wine than it does a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser. Third, and lastly, the question brings up another question: is this how Bejar wanted the songs to sound originally, but decided to re-do them in a synthesizer orchestra?? Basically, the possibility exists that he always wanted the songs to be careening-off-the-rails and Your Blues was the re-imagining rather than vice versa.

Anyway, even if you don't like any of these Frog Eyes-enhanced versions, this is ideally what I want from an EP. So many bands squander the potential of this musical format, either by releasing glorified singles or weighing them down with unnecessary remixes. Rather, I like EPs made up of all new material. Maybe the band recorded some good stuff, but it didn't function in the context of an album proper. Or maybe, as in this case, the songs twisted into strange new shapes during the tour and merited an official studio document.

At any rate, I find Notorious Lightning and Other Works a fascinating listen even if, ultimately, the Your Blues album is the true masterpiece of the two. Again, that's not to say I can't like both. There's room in my life for both the full band stomp of the Notorious 'Your Blues' (with surprisingly ornate keyboards that hint back to the original version) and the reverb drenched, synthesizer-flugelhorn led Your Blues version. It's strange for me to end a review this way, but if you don't like this EP, you should try the album. And if you simply can't get past the MIDI-ified album, then try the EP.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 3- EP

I'm resisting the urge to begin my review by making the obvious joke about how the Fiery Furnaces are so long winded their EPs are as long as another band's album...and I suppose I just did. Regardless, it's hard to know what to make, conceptually, of this release. The EP label may be an ironic one by a band who've always had more of a sense of humor than we give them credit for, but it's also misleading label, too.

So, then: after releasing Blueberry Boat the Fiery Furnaces had a handful of singles that predated it which either never saw release in the U.S. or were largely ignored. As demand for new product arose after everybody lost their collective minds over their second album, the band and/or their record label decided to compile a stop-gap release until the next album(s). The term "stop-gap" release is a loaded one, weighted down with negative connotations of shoveling a bunch of crap together into a pile to exploit cash soaked fans, but let me assure you that EP is a substantial release in its own right, and the one thing we'd heard before--'Tropical Ice-Land', here spelled 'Tropical-Iceland'--appears in a different form.

I've long wrestled with the idea of which Fiery Furnaces release makes for the best introduction to the band. I tend to just want to foist Blueberry Boat unto their plate and tell them to eat until they get it. However, in listening to EP in the context of the rest of the band's discography, it's easily the most compact and digestible meal to be had. At only 10 songs and 40ish minutes, it's almost like an appetizer to whet one's appetite for the full(er) albums.

As for the music, well, it steers carefully toward the pop side of the Furnaces' persona. While there are touches of the experimentation and song suite stylings from Blueberry Boat, they are largely kept in check by sweet melodies and strong songwriting. 'Cousin Chris' is pretty unorthodox, but the burbling keyboard parts and the Friedberger siblings syrupy vocals help the medicine go down. Meanwhile, all the restraint has been stripped from the aforementioned 'Tropical Ice-Land': in its 'Tropical-Iceland' revision, it's a surging new wave rocker, much zestier but less filling. If there's a weak spot here, it's 'Sweet Spots', which sounds and feels like a transitional song between Gallowsbird's Bark and Blueberry Boat but doesn't top or even equal anything from those two albums; instead, it's a chugging, repetitive number with "yeah yeah" refrains that feel apathetic and thrown together. Thankfully, the rest of the release is ace, including 'Duffer St. George', which sets its chorus to the tune of "Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care" (or whatever that 'song' is called) and is gleeful fun because of it.

Really, you can't go wrong with EP. It's equivalent to a full album for the price of an EP (roughly $10 last time I checked), and it will please diehard fans as well as it does newcomers.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 1- Gallowsbird's Bark

The Fiery Furnaces make for one of the more fascinating stories in indie rock, emerging into our consciousness on the wave of the early 00's garage rock boom, settling into critical darling status with 2004's Blueberry Boat, blowing it with Rehearsing My Choir, and recovering with Bitter Tea and Widow City. At the same time, their music is equally...ok, realistically, the music is much, much more fascinating than the story behind it, a sound that is by turns complex and simple, catchy and obtuse, retro and futuristic.

For all the talk--and boasting from Matt Friedberger--about how prolific the band is, the Fiery Furnaces have only released 5 albums in the past 6 years (one more if you count the EP release, two more if you count Matt's solo double album). And it all began with 2003's Gallowsbird's Bark, a release that at the time made sense in the context of the White Stripes/Strokes/The Hives garage band era of the early years of this decade. Looking back now, though, the Fiery Furnaces were always weirder and more diverse than their contemporaries. Certainly I don't want to make the impression that Gallowsbird's Bark is as strange as what was to come, but it's also misleading to call it garage rock. Though it does have far more guitars and shorter songs than any other Fiery Furnaces release, it still has a hefty dose of trademark keyboards, songwriting twists, and wordy, book-ish lyrics.

The main thing that strikes me about the album now is how close it sounds to future Fiery Furnaces releases. The common consensus that this is their "rock" album or their "pop" album (or both) is mostly true, but it's still far from something as accessible and populist as the contemporary releases from the Strokes or Fiery Furnaces. I've been listening to the Fiery Furnace albums as a patchwork quilt for a week or so now, and Gallowsbird's Bark doesn't stand out as much as you might think. Witness a song like 'Two Fat Feet': sure, it's got the sludgy garage rock guitar riff, but it's also got a flirty, fancy piano/keyboard line and lyrics that include the word "snaggletooth." Then there's 'Inca Rag/Name Game', effectively two seamless songs in one, which--as every review probably will mention--points the way to the genius song suites of Blueberry Boat.

Speaking of which, the final three songs of the album are one of the finest things the band has ever done. A true link to Blueberry Boat, 'Tropical Ice-land', 'Rub-Alcohol Blues', and 'We Got Back The Plague' are a continuous trio of songs, each every bit as distinct as the others and yet fitting together perfectly. 'Tropical Ice-land' in particular deserves praise as both a fan favorite and one of their best songs, so much so that an alternate "single" version appears on the EP release. I prefer this version over that peppy, new wave rave up. It starts with a melancholy, complicated guitar line after a false start and then the glorious lyrics begin under a swath of gauzy acoustic guitars. The beautiful refrain will stick in your head for days--sing it with me: "tropical icey icey"--and the odd chirping sounds and stray percussive touches will remind you that, even at their pop-iest, there is always more going on than there seems in Fiery Furnaces land.

On its own, Gallowsbird's Bark is an incredible album. The only problem I have with it is that, while it's only around 46 minutes long, it's also 16 songs and so it always feels longer than it is. This is a problem common to all Fiery Furnaces releases, though in latter cases it will be because they actually are long albums. Anyway, on its own the album is great and still the best place to enter the Fiery Furnaces world. However, in terms of the band's discography, it's only above Rehearsing My Choir in my estimation. That's not to say it's a bad album or even a bad Fiery Furnaces album; I think I've made that clear enough. But, what's still to come--which I will get to in time--is exponentially more interesting and rewarding.