Red Sails - Self-Titled EP

Pardon the break from styles (all of you imaginary readers), this was a review I've been shopping around to different e-zines and they always have length constrictions. So rather than re-doing it for flow's sake, it's staying as is. Deal with it, nobody.

Red Sails - Self-Titled EP (Tom Tierney - vocals/guitar/accordion, Patrick Southern - Bass, Nate Smith - Drums)
1. Empty Jelly Jars
2. Dogs of Cedar Hill
3. In Time
4. Rats on the T
5. Boulders

Red Sails is a band composed of three twenty-something Brooklyn-or others focused on making a name for themselves. This first offering is a versatile preamble to an LP that could as easily be a pop gem heart throb, in the ranks of Voxtrot or Belle and Sebastian, as it could be an unabashed hick rock affair a la Son Volt or Uncle Tupelo...or Wilco for that matter. There's such an inherent wisdom to the workings of pop music right from the start on "Empty Jelly Jars". The melodic verses, the crashing pre-choruses, the belt-it-out choruses, and for the record, "waltzing constellation" has got to be at least top five prettiest phrases ever. Even on the blues tracks, there's total cohesion and flow when it's just so easy to get lost in riffing and sliding and all those other guitar tricks that are mostly interesting to the guitarist and no one else.

Let's say an album is like a movie. To elaborate, an EP is like a movie trailer. A good movie trailer should be exciting, compact, easy to swallow. A movie trailer should NOT reveal the best jokes or the coolest explosions in a movie. It should entice you into the plot line and get you interested in the characters. It's so easy for a band to lock into a genre or even a specific sound on an EP. For a band who has yet to establish a sound, it's downright silly to try and establish one on an EP. If you do, you're not likely to replicate or improve upon it on your first venture into LP land. And disappointment is, call me crazy, not a term you want associated with your debut. It's also incredibly easy to just be totally weird and unapproachable, because I mean, it's an EP right? But this grouping of five tracks could scarcely do more to convince me in the merit of the band, and the future possibilities.