3 out of 5

Produced by: Carl Saff (recorded, mixed by)

Label: Dirigible Recordings

This is satisfyingly unformed.  “What?” you say, “That’s less sensible than most of the things you write I don’t actually read or care about, much less comment on!”  Ah, but you say the most pointed things when I have you at gunpoint.  (Metaphorically?)

Often when I go back to experience a band’s first release, I’ll find some zip of energy or rawness that I can identify as having evolved or matured in some way to their current sound; this satisfies some need of mine to connect threads from the start to the end of existence, and also to retroactively support any suspicion I might have as to whether or not release A would’ve kept me enthralled enough to listen to releases B through Z.  And then sometimes you’re caught off guard by the fact that the first shot may have been the best one, and you scramble about to re-justify liking their modern stuff.  I know this is all just as important to you as it is to me.

Dlry is pretty all-around average.  That’s satisfying because, I dunno, it’s not bad in a way that makes me have to waste text in support of my fandom, nor is it so amazing as to put the rest of my Del Rey collection to shame.  It just sort of exists.  It has some Del Rey elements – the stop/starts of ‘Darkness‘ and ‘Pyramid’ and the electronics of ‘Speak It Not Aloud’ – but not used so concisely as to yet be considered their “sound.”  The group undeniably has talent, both compositionally and instrumentally, and applies it on this EP to get down to business on opener ‘comeinpeace’ and then to patiently get all groove jammy on tracks like the near-8 minute ‘intergirl,’ but on the whole, you can predict the post-rock ebb and flow of things pretty easily.

The EP features skilled musicians jamming together for an engaging 30ish minutes.  It’s well made but fairly indistinct amongst other instrumental long-song rockers.  Maybe you picked this up and gave it a listen, and were surprised some years on that the group stuck it out to make an album.  And then when you listened to that album, and realized that these skilled musicians had figured out had to shape themselves into an actual band with an actual sound, you had no need to go back to the EP.