2 out of 5

Produced by: Andy Miller

Label: Secretly Canadian

In order to achieve the raw ferocity of her many great albums, we have to allow Ms. Scout Niblett room to explore her abilities and sound.  And she’s done us the favor, several times, of recording some of those explorations, and dropping them on us as EPs or singles.

I Conjure Series, as a lead-in to the game-changing I Am, is notable for the shift away from gentle folkstress it presented: recorded live, opening on a shrill shout and drumbeat, the short EP is exactly a crossing over point between her first and second albums, from the lulling sweetness of Rimsky to the Rescue to the gleeful intensity of that opener and the brief but appealing Makka Ni Moeru.

Unfortunately, while interesting, nothing on here is really stronger than any of the material on the preceding and succeeding discs, and what does work – like second track Linus – is but a sketch of an idea embraced much more fully on I Am.

Something to own for complwtists, but frankly not something I return to listen to otherwise.