Check out The Pear Traps who have recently put out their self-titled EP. "Formed in 2009, The Pear Traps are a 5 piece band from Chicago who's music mixes lo-fi garage rock and alt-country." These guys dropped their new EP past my inbox, so here it is. You can stream the song "Come Home" here and you can go to the Bandcamp link to check out the rest of the EP.
The EP starts out with "Come Home" (which is available for free download). This song blends the eerie, echoing vocals with a base of alt-country style guitars which are accompanied by lead guitar shimmering in the distance. The next song, "Honestly" starts out with some firm chords but breaks to a light, fluttering guitar riff. This song has less of that lo-fi "noise" but theres distant sustained chords which offer a really cool effect. "Predictable Kinds of Thoughts" starts out with a great guitar arrangement which returns for breaks. The drums in this are really cool because when there are heavy cymbol crashes its blends and adds to that "noise" factor. When this song ends is when it actually hits me and my ears want to be filled with beauty yet again. "Safer Than You" is a nice short song where the bass really stands out and is more noticeable than in the others. The end starts to get a lot of layering going on which drives us into "They Are Not Ours". This song starts out with just a guitar and those distant, fuzzy vocals that we have been enjoying then it builds up to a full band instrumentation to ride it out. This brings us to the final song, which happens to be my favorite. "Answer" starts with a very calm beginning which leads me to die down but I actually jumped when the song kicked in. A little after the 2 minute mark is where I start to really love this track because they kick it up a notch and it starts to get unsettling. The fuzz that the guitar creates is very cool and the end just drops down to a stand still as the final flame burns out.
All in all, I really enjoy the beauty that lo-fi creates. There is a lot of layering going on which blends into steaming pot of soup. Theres never anything overpowering, even the vocals are distant. The vocals are great because they serve more as another instrument rather than a center of attention. This is really as lo-fi as lo-fi gets, but thats what makes it so beautiful.
Bandcamp: thepeartraps.bandcamp.com (click here to check out full EP)
Myspace: www.myspace.com/thepeartraps
The Pear Traps - Come Home
