your heart was telepathic when you died on the Atlantic in 1975

While I’m on the topic of the band, I may as well review Saturday Looks Good To Me’s Cold Colors EP.The title evokes an expression of boldness through subtlety, and that is exactly what the album sounds like: anger and harshness, pain and ice-cold distance sung at almost a whisper. I know that SLGTM has a reputation for being experimental, but this EP takes it beyond anything they've ever done before, and kind of reminds me of the way The Magnetic Fields have adapted and played with sounds in their later albums.

Cold Colors is probably my least favorite song, because it manages to be chaotic without being very loud. It’s hard for me to appreciate that or to find it to be particularly inspired. Drink My Blood and Idiots have Elliot Smith, and bits of Tim Kasher, all over them, while Illuminated Circles Dream of Backwards Running Vampires has a much more traditional SLGTM sound.

Spiderbite, my favorite song of the EP, has Elliot Smith all over the first half, especially around the parts that begin at 1:20 and 3:40. I really like Fred’s voice on this one, especially the way the sad violin complements the slowwwwwness of the song’s delivery. Every word lingers over the one before it, and even the highs seem low because they’re played so softly. But then, in a rather irreverent juxtaposition, there is this haunting, and much louder bit at the latter half of the song, that is very Godspeed You Black Emperor . It’s probably the best song I’ve heard from the band in awhile, despite sounding so uncharacteristic.

Buy the EP here.