Pages

Monday, June 24, 2013

Gracie - Bleeder EP (2013)

Last year when I heard "Creature Pleaser", the first single from Gracie's Bleeder EP, it was really all I wanted to listen to. I played it countless time for countless days and the announcement of the actual release of the Bleeder EP was met more with a hope that the other songs on the record would turn out to be somewhere in the same infectiously good musical realm of "Creature Pleaser" than anything else.

Rather unsurprisingly, Bleeder is more than just a collection of songs providing a cushion for its standout track. Don't get me wrong "Creature Pleaser" still is and probably will be the greatest song Gracie has released but the rest of the tracks on the EP have their merits. Whether it's album opener "Witnessed" which is the perhaps the closest spiritually to "Creature Pleaser" on the record, sultry "Pillow" with its rather Unknown Mortal Orchestra recalling vocals, or really any of the record's tracks really, Bleeder is a record that tries and succeeds to cover a wide variety of sounds and moods while staying true to a similar cohesiveness.

Tracks like "ItsSppookkyy" and "Habits" provide Bleeder with an emotionally resonant core alongside it's dance-y rabblerousers. Gracie's Andrew Balasia might be gifted at creating toe-tapping, body-moving electro-pop but it's on those two tracks that his musical talents are allowed to shine - able to appropriately pair forward moving beats with pure heartfelt feeling.

So I may have come for "Creature Pleaser" but I stayed for the rest of Bleeder - a thoroughly enjoyable 7 song EP which covers a rather impressive ground in produced music. It's varying beats are interesting but not the only noteworthy thing about the songs. There's a multitude of layers to Bleeder and an astonishing amount of well-roundedness to the whole affair. It makes you wonder that if Gracie consider this to be just an appetizer, what will we get for the main course? It's thrilling to think about and here's hoping it's not too late before we're treated to just that.



Gracie's Bleeder EP is out now on Small Plates Records.

No comments:

Post a Comment