4 out of 5

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Produced by: Sherry Fraser and Steven Drake

It’s hard not to feel excitement at the potential of Two Ton Boa’s debut EP. Sherry Fraser’s marrying of alternative rock to the burbling and burgeoning cabaret rock scene has the taint of been-there-done-that – like rap-rock, it’s a mash-up that has a very thin line between vital and cringe – but her passionate delivery, her impressionistic and gothic lyrical imagery, and a touch of steam punk percussion nudges things into a slightly off realm. That firstly leans us onto the “vital” side of the line, but simultaneously wipes away a lot of expectations one might have from the circus-y see-saw music and sing-song vocals. It’s not for nothing that the band initially found a home on Kill Rock Stars: there’s big punk energy here.

And the group is willing to take some swings, with the immediate accessibility of the openers grinding into more grit on Puppet Charm, or going longform on the 8+ minute Bleeding Heart, then peeling back to nigh-gentle pop on closer Have Mercy – somewhat predictive of their later years… It’s a wide ranging demonstration of power, that, as mentioned, is pretty exciting.

At album length, the scattershot nature of the EP wouldn’t work; at the same time, some of the limitations of the songwriting – Fraser is stuck on a couple of themes, even if she finds a nice selection of ways to talk about it; and the hard-hitting low-end falls back on similar melodies – become more apparent when trying to tame the sound into something more linear. This was the perfect taste of the band: close enough to the alt-rock era to have bite, and early enough such that the music had direction but was relatively untamed, allowing some experimentation to seep in, and all of this in exactly the proper, 5-song dose.