The Silent Years
Let Go
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Sidecho Records
Josh Epstein's Detroit-based project, The Silent Years, seems to strive for complexity. Along with 2008's full length debut, The Globe, the five-piece's new EP, Let Go, is a solid piece of involved, dense pop music; in a genre with an inherent reputation for lightweight simplicity, it's an accomplishment in itself. Let Go's six songs manage the feat of actually sounding engaging and catchy. Good for you, people.
From the opener "Taking Drugs at the Amusement Park" on, there's a sense of playfulness in each track, albeit a quietly sorrowful one. Epstein's lyrics sometimes border on the nonsensical, contributing to the song's whimsy: "All of my friends think I'm kind of a mess.../ You know they've not been with me for life/ They're not in my head--shit! They got in my head." There's a strong undercurrent of melancholy, however, just as the title states, there's a companion feeling of release and catharsis. This is particularly so in the gorgeous "Forest Fire," a song that takes quite a few cues from The Cure, circa The Head on the Door. Over longing violins and a poppy keyboard, Epstein sings, "We worry that as places change/ All our memories won't remain/ Your favorite day might just have been/ A part of someone's worst weekend" in what might be the defining statement of the EP.
The following track, "Madame Shocking," begins with a stately wall of strings, only to dissolve into a Ronettes-style drum beat and a nearly-funky guitar. For any faults of whimsy that Let Go has, it's certain that predictability isn't one of them. However, it's disconcerting that playfulness has to go into songs titles as egregiously awful as "TV>BJ," which, in spite of itself, is actually a delightful, organ-driven romp. I guess you can't have it every which way all the time. The closer "Claw Marks" is as gloomy as the rest of the album is upbeat, with heavily distorted guitar humming over an intro briefly, until Epstein dives back into the mix with, "I picture you at 6 years old/ Shivering in the freezing cold/ You always were a lonely soul." That kind of sentiment could be cloying, were it not for the simple beauty of the guitar line that drives the song and the tempting honesty behind his voice. If The Silent Years have to indulge themselves occasionally, it's a good thing they can back it up with their songs.
by Nathan Kamal