Dead to Me
Wait for It
Shield Recordings
10/10
Dead to Me’s latest 7-inch, “Wait for It”, was a rather pleasant surprise for 2010. There was no formal talk about the band releasing said 7-inch, as far as anyone knew Dead to Me wasn’t releasing any material this year, then out of nowhere a twitter update was posted about recording some new songs. Give or take a few weeks and there was an update about how it was going to be released in Europe in September and in America in October (just in time for Fest 9). In my opinion, this is how music should be released. We live in the Internet age and the dated standard of having an excessive timeline to promote an album just doesn’t work anymore. However, enough about Dead to Me’s awesome strategy in releasing this 7-inch and more about the actual music on it.
After being able to sit down and digest the EP I have come to the conclusion that is one of my favorite releases of 2010. Chicken handles all the vocals on the EP, which was a bit weird at first considering on each of their previous releases they’ve always had two vocalists switching off vocal duties on different tracks. The sound they were able to create was one that a bit reminiscent of their earlier releases but still displayed growth from their prior release, African Elephants.
The fact that this release only contained 3 songs meant that even one mediocre track would bring down the quality of the release heavily. However, that is not the case at all with all of the songs being very solid tracks. In fact the final track, “Pay Stub”, may be one of the best songs Dead to Me has released to date. If this is a sampling of what their next full length will sound like consider me eager beyond words.
-Armando Olivas