This brief introduction to Canadian indie supergroup/side project
the New Mendicants is a pleasing yet skeletal version of the classy harmonic guitar pop they would later offer on their fully realized 2014 debut, Into the Lime. In 2013 Norman Blake (
Teenage Fanclub) and
Joe Pernice (
the Pernice Brothers) announced they were starting a new band together and booked themselves a short Australian tour as an acoustic duo. Drummer
Mike Belitsky of
the Sadies would later join the group, but initially it was just Blake and
Pernice who scrambled to assemble this limited-run six-song EP to sell while on tour. Consisting of an
INXS cover ("This Time") and reworked versions of Blake's
Teenage Fanclub gem "I Don't Want Control of You" and
the Pernice Brothers' "Amazing Glow," along with three underdeveloped new songs that would later appear on their debut, this EP veers between charmingly off-the-cuff and not-quite-enough. A project featuring such highly respected indie pop veterans is intriguing enough in itself and these early acoustic versions of songs like "High on the Skyline" and "Sarasota" give an indication of what the band could be capable of, but as a legitimate release, it's hard to hide the fact that this was essentially a quickly made decoration for the merch table. It's an appetizer with some potential, but the real fruit of this collaboration is best heard on the LP that arrived the following year. ~ Timothy Monger