(100) Days of Soundtrack: #19 – Bored With Four – Letting You Go [EP]/Way Out – Way Out [EP]
A couple friends have recommended EPs to me so far, and while I have no aversion to the format, I was hesitant. The brevity of an EP makes it feel a bit like cheating, and while there are a few albums which will make the cut at a fairly brief tracklisting, there does seem to need to be a lower limit of some sort. The other thing which tore at me a little, as awful as it sounds, was that both were local artists. Local bands can often come laden with bias: someone’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend used to play drums, the bassist was someone’s best man, they play at someone’s favorite bar every other Tuesday. I respect that, but I also want to know there’s some real music going on here, too. So I waffled on this. But eventually, I figured, hey, let’s have a whole weekend of this sort of thing. We’ll just dive into the dusty local archives. As for the length? Let’s just double these bad boys up!
First up, Bored With Four‘s EP Letting You Go. Bored With Four is a terrible name to give yourself when you’re releasing a four track EP. It’s not particularly apt as a name, though: this is fun and engaging music. Across the board this is an EP of what classic soul would sound like mixed with lite jazz and filtered through a hipster lens. That is exactly what it sounds like on “Right With Everything,” warts and all, but it’s also exactly why “Wild One” bubbles over with bouncy keys and infectious spunk. It allows “Big Blue” to mix videogame style sequencing with crunchy guitars, and allows “Letting You Go” to go full on blue-eyed yearning. Overall, I like what I hear.
If Bored With Four is a throwback in some ways, so too is Way Out. The latter band would fit in well with the 80s goth scene, and they mine their influences well on their self-titled EP. There’s just enough reverb across the board. The guitars are just clean enough and the bass just dirty enough. While songs like “Arrival” hammer their point across, it is the slower, more plaintive “No Release” which draws me in most. This surprises me not a whit; I tend to like haunting more than simply haunted, and the slower tempo allows space for all those darker moments to expand.
The beauty of a good EP is that it can do everything an album does in a brief package. It also can do more sometimes. I’m unsure either band here would leave as positive a taste in my mouth in long form: Bored With Four would undoubtedly drift into cringeworthy filler somewhere around track 8, while Way Out would simply suffer from too much goth at once… it’s not a genre I can easily sustain interest in. However, in tapas form, both leave a pleasant taste in the metaphorical mouth. A great band will always leave one wanting more, but it’s no shame for a good band to know exactly how much to deliver to keep one satisfied, and stop there.
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