First released in May 2014, Quarterboy marked the D.I.Y. debut for upstate New Yorker Dean Engle, whose tender, lovesick introspections were later given a fuller treatment on Quarterbacks' eponymous 2015 full-length for Team Love Records. Although the track listing isn't the same, there is enough overlap of material for Quarterboy to come across as a scratch pad of demos for the singer/songwriter's full-band debut. Roughly captured on a budget Tascam four-track cassette recorder, the performances alternate between hushed acoustic intimacy and muffled idea-catching as Engle wanders his way through brief confessions and fevered sessions of spontaneous part-writing. A somewhat challenging listen, Quarterboy is about as lo-fi as it gets, yet the charm of Engle's delivery and the vulnerable nature of his songwriting is disarming and at times poignant. His ephemeral bedroom pop missives rarely clock in at more than a minute and a half and, as presented here, feel newborn and fragile. The loose but winsome "Center" has an unadorned sweetness to it and even "Rain Delay," with its distracting blown-out finger-tapped percussion, is elusively pretty. Re-released -- on cassette, appropriately -- in 2018 with a bonus track, Quarterboy has a sort of early-manuscript appeal and even manages to stand on its own here and there, though its roughshod construction and open-ended feel make it more of a curiosity than an essential.