E.’s Neighborhood

It's official. The Long Winters' Putting the Days to Bed is just as good as their first two cds. And this is a case where "just as good" is no faint praise.

Their first two cds, The Worst You Can Do is Harm and When I Pretend to Fall, lived in my cd player for several months after I bought them, at the same time, simply on the strength of LJ user rollerboogie's passive endorsement (she had a button on her profile page) and the four mp3s Barsuk had up on the website: "Carparts," "Scent of Lime," "Stupid," and "Blue Diamonds." Those songs were so awesome I needed to have the cds instantly. Somehow, bending all rules of space and time, the cds lived up to that level of awesome and then went on to exceed it. It was like I'd struck gold, or invented velcro. That's how clever I felt.

I already praised the Ultimatum EP that fell between When I Pretend to Fall and the release of Putting the Days to Bed. But, in summary: a very useful little album to have. Especially since the track "Ultimatum" [EP version] went through some changes between the EP and the LP. I think I actually prefer the slower version off the EP, though the LP's louder, faster version is great too.

Putting the Days to Bed did take a few listens before I fell in love with it. I loved the first half near instantly, but the second half took some time. If I have any complaints, it's one of the last tracks, "Departure." It's loud and raucous. Though not inherently bad, it's a little jarring because of its placement on the album. It may have fared better earlier on the album instead of sandwiched between two relatively calm, reflective songs. It's a small complaint, and I do love the song, which, once I got over its aggressive drums and electric guitars, endeared itself to me with the line "I like the old days, but not all the old days. Only the good! old! days!" Amen.

Download "Pushover" from Barsuk. It's the first track off the album and was an instant hit with me. If you like what you hear, just go ahead and buy everything The Long Winters have put out. The mp3s I've linked to here are completely representative of the band's sound. Their music is exciting, the lyrics are clever and surprising, and if you order from Barsuk, and please do, they send you free stickers with your order. Stop by to get a code and get 15% off your purchase.

New things are hard, and Vox seems to have been designed to purposely confuse Windows users. All the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons are in the opposite of expected order. Instead of "cancel" or "no" always being on the right, that's where the "OK" is. I keep agreeing to things I wanted to cancel.

I'm messing around with the Amazon sidebars and listening to this Mountain Goats EP I bought on a whim. LJ user Corinna_5 gave me, because I asked, a list detailing the Mountain Goats cds I needed to buy, and in what order. This wasn't on that list, but I'm at the point in my Goats listening that I now deeply believe John Darnielle can do no wrong and I will happily fling my money at him with little to no encouragement. I bought Babylon Springs along with We Shall all be Healed (third on Corinna's list) because it was the only other cd the label was selling that I didn't already have, and now I just can't stop listening to it.

It's a tasty snack of an album. Five tracks, all of a similar sound in that way Darnielle excels at. EP's are tricky. In this age of mp3s, they're easier to listen to, no longer an awkward waste of space in the cd player, but I still prefer my stereo over my laptop's speakers. So for me, music dinosaur, an EP has to be awesome to get my attention and keep it, perfect through and through. Twenty minutes of uninterrupted genius. And all new material if you can swing it. This is one of those rare perfect EPs. It's jaunty and original, a slice of time like a tiny little album.

Tori Amos' Winter is a close contender for this title. Technically it's a cd single, so it probably operates under a different set of rules, but if it weren't for "The Pool," a short, creepy moaner of a track not at all in the spirit of the rest of the cd, it'd totally win a perfect EP award. It's one of the EPs I listen to the most. Tori Amos is known for releasing b-sides that never get on a full album, and for that reason I own most of her cd singles. Winter has three of what I consider her best songs, and it's the only place to find them outside of her concerts.

The Long Winters' Ultimatum, a true EP, has been enjoying a renaissance with me. It's a little unbalanced in that it's got two live tracks at the end, one of which is a duplicate of the title track "Ultimatum," the other a song off a previous album. It's still got four original pieces on it, all good for the reasons The Long Winters is always good. Are always good? Damn one-man bands and their subject-verb agreement. I bought Ultimatum because it was a long, dry time between full-length albums, and it filled that space admirably.

Another EP that fits into this stop-gap measure category is They Might Be Giants' Indestructible Object. Released between No! and The Spine, Indestructible Object was a nice introduction to TMBG's latest direction. Each TMBG album has its own style, and this EP, right down to the album art, is the perfect companion for The Spine. Unsurprisingly, part of that perfection is because two of its five tracks actually show up on The Spine, and as they're also two of the three best tracks, this EP has become somewhat obsolete now that the LP is out.