Here We Go Magic - The January EP

Here We Go Magic – The January EP

written by: Alex Bahler June 2, 2011

Release Date: May 10, 2011

For some people, a little bit of Here We Go Magic goes a long way. On The January EP, the band goes a long way for just a little bit.

Appreciation for Here We Go Magic’s two full-length albums, the 2009 self-titled debut and 2010’s slightly more extroverted Pigeons, depended on the listener’s tolerance for extended musical meandering (or, in simpler terms, whether you labeled Animal Collective as “adventurous” or “overindulgent”). For every flash-bang funhouse like Pigeons‘ “Old World United,” there were at least three or four snoozers.

Songs like “Old World United” were worth polite applause, but now for the first time on record, Here We Go Magic actually sounds thrilling.

If you found Here We Go Magic’s previous efforts saggy, try “Tulip” on for size – it’s a hip-shaking rocker with terse riffs, graveyard keyboards and some mean falsetto from singer Luke Temple. “You got that message/And that message wasn’t clean,” he sings, coy as ever. There’s this outdated notion that makes a lot of music fans queasy, the one that states rock music has to be all loud, dick-swinging flamboyance, but Here We Go Magic do that kind of thing well, and listeners shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting more of that on a future release. For all its indulgence, the band can walk the tightrope, too; “Tulip” is tempered with come-hither suggestion, the pulsing lust doing a do-si-do with pretty persuasion.

This former one-man project of Temple’s has toured with other sepia-toned acts like The Walkmen and Grizzly Bear, but The January EP is most similar to the form and function of thecontrollersphere from of Montreal, a new EP from an artist-cum-frontman that mixes what sounds like dull outtakes with new sounds that (hopefully) hint at a change in course.

After the freezing pool dip of “Tulip,” sex gives way to sadness. A kinetic beat kicks off “Hands in the Sky,” but the lyrics—the EP’s best—make it crawl, and this is a very good thing. “For a while her body made no sound,” Temple sings about a dying mother, “and the first thing she said as they wheeled her to her son/’Forgive me boy, I know now what I’ve done.'”

The story continues to unravel to its inevitable end: “A broken frame with a wide electric face/The heat of her love/In the face of her disease/Would bring any man standing to his knees.” It’s not often a song—one that sounds like The Antlers covering Dave Matthews Band—gets you hopelessly hooked like a soap opera fan by the second verse. Soon after, no words can express the narrator’s loss, and a whirl of instruments only attempts to replicate the rush of emotions over a lost love one.

As before, Here We Go Magic falters when aimlessness, figuring something meaningful will just materialize. “Hollywood” is vaguely ethereal church music, interesting only because the repeated title sounds more like “holy war.” And “Mirror Me” is meh at best, with flowery keyboards, layers of guitar, blurry vocals and are you asleep yet? Here We Go Magic has always showed flickers of promise, never more than on The January EP. However, even in such a short release, there’s still some malaise and fat (characteristic of the dullest month of the year).

They should shake it off soon. Bands get restless by the time of the third album, which is why so many of those range from subtle tweaks to major departures from an established sound (The Velvet Underground, Wilco, KT Tunstall…there’s enough to fill a separate record store section). The January EP is not that third album. It is, however, a rough blueprint, and if arresting moments like “Hands in the Sky” arrive clasping hands with punchy songs like “Tulip” and the Police-styled new waver “Backwards Time,” album numero tres should surprise fans and skeptics alike.