Erik Blood’s Transom EP.
I’ve been lamenting the devaluation of the full-length album for awhile now, but even a crotchety bastard like me has to cop to the fact that the short, sweet burst of a great single or EP is an art form that’s flourishing and worth celebrating.
The fact is that this summer, much of the new local music I’ve been enjoying has frequently been in deliberately bite-sized (or, in Halloween candy parlance, fun-size) formats. Enclosed, please find the Northwest singles and EPs that’ve been rocking my corner of the world during summer 2016. Some of ‘em are brand-spanking new, others have been kicking around for a few months already. But all of ‘em indisputably deserve your listening time.
Colorworks, Dreams of Mangoes (EP): Did Colorworks step through a portal from 1966 into the here and now? That’s a pretty plausible theory. Then again, branding these songs as simple retro sells their youthful urgency and beauty way short. This is psychedelia made for these dog days of summer—sunny and wide-eyed with melodies as sweet/tart as a sorbet-filled waffle cone. “Daydreams” is one of the most incandescent psych-pop songs I’ve heard in awhile, with chiming guitars and yearning schoolboy vocals that’ll elicit chills. “Pears and Mangoes” name-drops Seattle streets amidst a bounding Kinks-y piano melody and a wistful trumpet-goosed fade-out, “She Said No” is the greatest single the Zombies never released, and the spot-on harmonies of “Collision” are relentlessly perky enough to make Donald Trump toss aside his xenophobia to go skipping through Woodland Park with flowers in his rug hair. More please, gentlemen, damn quick.
Tangerine, Sugar Teeth (EP): This fall, when it’s as dull-gray as a muddy cement pond outside, you’ll want to keep Sugar Teeth handy to chase that dreariness away, stat. “Tender” kicks off this EP with a thrilling burst of power-pop goosed by irresistible, near-snarling guitars and a crunchy yet sweet melodic hook. To know it is to love it. Elsewhere, “Sunset” weds chiming Brit-pop with a chugging rockabilly backbeat, “Wild at Heart” gives girl-group smoothness another hard-guitar energy boost, and the title track winds things down with pensive, flanged guitar strums gracefully lifted from Prince’s “Purple Rain” and bittersweet, gazing-at-the-sunset beauty. If you’re looking for the soundtrack to your last great windows-down summertime drive of 2016, jump on it. If you’re looking for the soundtrack to your first great windows-down summertime drive of 2017, here’s your sonic head-start.
Erik Blood, Transom (EP): Lost in Slow Motion, Erik Blood’s most recent full-length album, came out in April, and it’s the kind of record Best-of lists are made for. Two months previous, though, he released this four-track effort, which provides a compelling sneak peek into the aesthetic that informs his long-player. The dense sonic atmosphere and melodic beauty that characterize Lost are all over these songs/mood pieces: “No Idols, Only Gods” and “NIGHTSWIM” ladle on the atmosphere, while the looped percussion and endlessly-echoed creamy vocal harmonies haunting “Queen of Your Parade,” sound (sorta) like a collaboration between Elliott Smith and Brian Eno. The jewel among this very heady bit of magic is “Rachel,” a sublime, glistening pop song with evocative siren-song vocals by former XVIII Eyes/current Dust Moth singer Irene Barberic.
Golden Gardens, “Extrasolar Heartbeat”(single): We at the SunBreak have always been saps for Golden Gardens’ brand of goth-pop, and this taster for their forthcoming Martin Feveyear-produced long-player Reign will not disappoint. Feveyear’s production adds a more driving, direct sound to Gregg Neville’s guitars, and Aubrey Bramble’s ethereal vocals have never sounded better.
Smokey Brights, “In Demand” and “Not Enough Time” (singles): These two singles anticipating the Smokeys’ forthcoming full-length Hot Candy showcase the band’s continued knack for throwing everything but the kitchen sink into songs that still manage to be catchy as hell. The former showcases guitars that swing back and forth between anthemic walls-of-sound and hornet’s nest distortion, intertwined staccato vocalizing, keyboards, and a rhythm section that goes from concise to epic pounding on a dime. “Not Enough Time” (recently premiered at the Impose Magazine website) sounds like roots music, epic U2-tinged guitar rock, and Arcade Fire exultance sticking to Fleetwood Mac like velcro. And yeah, both songs’re catchy as hell.
Ravenna Woods, “Alleyways”: At first blush, this new track from one of Seattle’s best live bands sounds like a major about-face. It’s tautly electric instead of darkly acoustic. Matt Badger’s drums are more coiled-tense and compact than rumbling and relentless. And keyboards—tinkling like broken glass and buzzing like fluorescent tube lights in hell—provide much of the melodic enforcement in lieu of Chris Cunningham’s expected wash of fiercely-strummed acoustic guitar. But spiritually, “Alleyways” is pure Ravenna Woods. It thrums with the same enthralling tension that’s coursed through all the band’s work, with Cunningham’s rich baritone voice providing the anchor (his vocal resemblance to peak Elvis Costello especially stands out here). If the rest of their new material’s this frickin’ brilliant, their Alleyways and Animals EP (due to drop on October 21) can’t come soon enough.
