You’ll be hooked from opener Easy Now’s intro: a field recording that sounds like bustling traffic, with Santa’s bell ringing in the distance.
Enter descending keys, propulsive drums and an optimistic bassline, as the mysterious underscore plays on. Noah Harris’s beseeching vocals reel us in even further – that devastating falsetto, though! Verse two strips right back, before urgent riffs take flight and we gallop towards eternal bliss. It’s dynamically diverse, like an album’s worth of ideas executed to perfection within a single song. Circa 2004 was the last time this reviewer repeatedly hit repeat after a first listen (‘twas Lost In The Plot by The Dears, FYI).
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For much of the creative process, Harris was in Paris, Vincent McIntrye was in Mexico and both Luke Thomas and Tom Dowling were in Melbourne. The EP’s title references the equidistant timezones between all three locations: eight hours separating Melbourne and Paris, Paris and Mexico.
Moody and cinematic, the piano-led Echo Grey goes somewhere altogether different. The underlying pathos in Harris’s vocals is so captivating. During Worth It?’s final quarter, an instrumental freakout drops in outta nowhere. Then it all descends into glitchy chaos – like aliens trying to make contact via dialup internet.
Submarine’s wonky, disorienting guitar lines add a submerged, underwater quality.
There’s so much to sink your teeth into within just four songs. Yep, we’re officially fanning out over Fan Girl.
