4 out of 5

Label: Sixgunlover

Producer: Jeremy Lemos (engineer)

As close to perfect as minimalist guitar folk can get.  Bosco & Jorge’s EP is an exciting, beautiful gift of intensely designed guitar / banjo plucking and strumming, with a perfectly defined limit of drumming to punch up select moments.  Track time range from about 3 to 8 minutes but it never bores.  While at low volumes the dual acoustic twiddling might blend together, if you put it at a level to listen and just tune in, you’ll be mystified by how natural these complicated executions come across.  For every scale that seems like it might be rushed or have skipped a note, the second layer comes in to smooth it out and then it repeats, showing us that this was all as intended.  A lot of the Texas folky scene of this type uses the quiet intro to folk explosion second track attack, but what’s satisfying about B & J is the way they navigate these tropes – the first track is smooth, the second track brings in percussion, but neither is truly a muted song, nor is the second truly an energetic one – it’s just the juxtaposition that makes the clipped drumming effective, and its the way the first track avoids anything beyond its guitars to make its point that keeps it gorgeous.  No extras here.  …Except… for the slight misstep in sequencing that occurs during our last two tracks.  The group effects one vocal song that’s like a Thrill Jockey Sea and Cake affair, but it absolutely works here because it’s done fully.  This doesn’t feel like a separate band just tossing in some singing, nor is it so precious or delicate that it can’t break the surface.  I wouldn’t want a whole album of it (it’s probably the most typical sounding song on the collection), but again, the juxtaposition just makes it work.  And it would’ve worked great as a closer, but, to fill out space or whatever, we get one more instrumental track… which is a great track, but the slow buildup after the slow song just burdens the tail end of the short listen unnecessarily.  Otherwise, this is a shockingly exciting listen considering how sparse it is.