5 out of 5

Label: A&M

Produced by: Micheal W. Douglass and Alex Reed

…And here was everything you needed to know whether or not you’d found your new favorite band.  16 HP’s first EP just made sense from the moment its opening track – ‘Haw’ – kicks into its rollicking strum and, getting going, lead David Eugene Edwards lets out a celebratory yowl.  You’d liked country-tinged rock before, and you liked folk, but this amped up cross between the two – draped in a wonderfully murky mist of gloom thanks to twisty tunings and chord progressions and DEE’s contemplative lyrics – was something new, and remains unique and fresh sounding even to this day, in the wake of a scene the group was essentially responsible for expanding.  While the production is fairly bare-bones in terms of flourish, and requires a volume bump to get the full effect, it’s not an improper take on the group’s sound, and desirably lets a live vibe resound throughout, the bumping bass and flickering guitar and rolling drums proliferating the listen with a sense of urgency that started to slip away in later releases.

With touches of balladry (‘South Pennsylvania Waltz’) and humor (‘I Gotta Gal’) and all the folk-rocky coolness stuffed in-between, 16 HP’s first release is both a great intro to the band and a great summary of their quirks, and sounds just as assured looking back on it as it did when it first made its presence known.