Usually, the best rock & roll songs are those that wear their craft lightly. If the first thing you notice is that the writer must have put tons and tons of thought into the crafting of the song, then what you're witnessing is a failure of craft. But there are exceptions to that rule, and this EP (notwithstanding its title) is one such exception.
The Pale Pacific makes pop music that is intelligent, complex, and artsy without sounding in the least bit affected (well, maybe the least bit -- note the
Jump, Little Children-style vocal breakdown on "Sucker Punch"), and straightforwardly hooky, even pretty, without sounding in the least bit simple. It's hard to follow the organizational structure of songs like "Identity Theft" and "In the Sun, Pt. 1," but they don't leave you feeling lost, either -- they have some kind of private, internal logic that makes it easy to just relax and enjoy the ride. (This is a stopgap EP; the group's full album,
Urgency, includes three of these four songs.) ~ Rick Anderson