After the bore-fest of their last LP ‘Sumday’, we’ve waited over two years for something new to shake us out of our one-pace induced coma. Obviously realising that time waits for no beard, Jason Lyttle knocked off this mini-album for us in the meantime. A mixed bag indeed, this may just be the oddities that won’t make the forthcoming full album. However, given their now firm modus operandi, it will probably all sound the same anyway…

Perhaps bitten by the urgency bug, lead track ‘Pull The Curtains’ sounds like a Grandaddy taking a course in Pixies fire and brimstone. Innately, it’s still them, with their fuzzed up riffs and scattershop 1976 computer bleebs, but with more vim and vigour than has been seen for a while. ‘At My Post’ sounds like ELO spazzed out on xanax in the sun with a truly creepy belching keyboard motif part way through and returning again towards the end. ‘A Valley Son (Sparing)’ sees the band return to that nothing-happens-for-five-minutes furrow they’ve ploughed so magnificently for so long, but unfortunately for them ‘Fuck The Valley Fudge’ is nowhere near as good as the song title implies it might be. Impressively, whatever inertia is invoked is shaken out by ‘Florida’’s crazed Mudhoney jerkings, but, like it never appeared closer ‘Goodbye’ lulls us back to sleep.

Sadly, it’s very, very hard to get excited by another batch of Grandaddy recordings. Whatever magic they once had appears to have deserted them. Hopefully by the time of their fourth LP, they’ll have proved they’ve relocated them, and this is merely unedifying filler.