The Purrs' Tearing Down Paisley Garden Release Tonight at the Croc

Tearing Down Paisley Garden, the new EP from The Purrs, feels a bit like a quick and easy change of pace for a band that's four albums and ten years into their career.

Which isn't to say it's bad by any means, but compared to their last LP, Amused, Confused, and More Bad News, a focused, sophisticated effort, Paisley more or less playfully meanders about, resuscitating old material along with new songs and tossing in a pair of covers to just to even things out.

It's less an artistic statement as a recording than it is a compendium of the material the band's been using to fill out their live shows, and, in fact, tonight happens to be their release party down at the Crocodile, with Brent Amaker and the Rodeo and Battle Hymns (tickets $10, 21+).

The big song on the record is the extremely catchy cover of Eighties British post-punk outfit Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's "Only Dreaming." It's a clever choice for the band. Singer-songwriter and bassist Jima's voice has always tended a bit to the drone-y and dispassionate, almost perfectly suited to the gothy apathy of Mark Sweeney's original. But instead The Purrs turn the song musically on its head, driving the rhythm into new wave territory and pairing it with a beautifully realized surf-rock style lead line.

As for the new original material, it follows from the cleaner, more straight-forward rock style the band developed with Amused and its predecessor The Chemistry That Keeps Us Together as they moved away from baroque structures of their break-through, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. "Just a Little More" is an implacable mid-tempo rocker on which Jima lyrically brings together two of his favorite themes: small town anomie and a caustic socio-political vision.

Similarly, "It Could Be So Wonderful" demonstrates the band's evolution, pairing Rob Silverstein's thickly overdriven rhythm guitar with Jason Milne's elegant, lush lead. The staccato, spacey verses devolving into driving, sing-along-y choruses.

If Paisley doesn't represent a huge artistic leap for the band, it's still a thoroughly entertaining record, showing The Purrs have evolved into a tightly knit, accomplished rock outfit willing to let their pop tendencies show in a way they wouldn't have just a few years ago. As always, though, the recordings don't quite do justice to the band's live shows, which have an intensity and excitement that just doesn't quite come through.