LOWSUNDAY : "Black ep"

Perhaps not as dark as some of the albums I have been digging into lately as I get ready for  Halloween, but still a form of post-punk. I would not have guessed these guys were from America, so they have successfully fooled my ears, which, given the glut of albums I listen to daily, is a feat. They capture a sound that is in a similar ZIP code to what A Place to Bury Strangers used to occupy between shoe-gaze and post-punk, but these guys have more of the mellower elements of shoegaze, where A Place to Bury Strangers was more on the noisy My Bloody Valentine side of the genre's more end. 

The lead single that opens the EP works well, as it's catchy and the vocals are more forward than some of the murk they fall into by the time they get to "Someone to Talk," which falls more closely in the direction of early Cure. There is more of a Brit-pop mood to "Shattered' which is not the Rolling Stones, but an effective song on its own right. "This is Not Heaven" drifts through the haze of its reverb-heavy guitars, with the whispered vocals falling into the back of the mix and being swallowed by the haze of dusk. 

The last song drifts by in more of a haze while I appreciate the sounds; the vocals become a moot point as they drown in the effects this album is bathed in. I generally feel like how this album is produced works more often than not, but I feel the vocals could have gotten more love, which at the end of the day would have elevated the songs; they made the choices they made for the reasons they had at the time. You never know until you hear what the raw tracks they had to work with were like.  Still is a surprisingly enjoyable album; I will give a 9 as it takes the genres they blended in different directions

pst332