20 Jan 09
The 1900s
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Medium High EP
[January 20, 2009] | [Parasol Records]
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8.1/10
Usually when an EP comes along I am very skeptical on how the material within the album will be. My opinion on EP’s has never been good really and I have always told myself that EP’s were either a rushed album from a band that couldn’t put forth 100% of their effort or just a lazy band that just needed an extra paycheck. Even so, I continue to give them shot after shot, trying to find a new interest in the extended play. This was when I came across The 1900s, an upcoming band from Chicago that has more talent then people may know. The rather huge band (made up of 7 members) has taken on many different genres of music such as folk, pop, psychedelic, and experimental and has done them all justice. Their music itself has a joyous 60’s feel to it that I haven’t sensed with many bands other than Animal Collective as of late and we are able to see this on their new record Medium High very clearly.
The EP is actually an album that includes unreleased tracks that were left off their debut album, Cold & Kind, which was released in 2007. Usually albums like this translate into sloppy records where songs that don’t belong together or songs that weren’t even good enough get bunched onto a single record but this is entirely not the case for Medium High. Each track brings a different sense of their music. While the first track entitled “Collections” is a blissful pop song with acoustic guitars and violins, “Age Of Metals” shows us how talented the band are as folk musicians when they use harmonized vocals and a beautiful acoustic guitar riff that makes you just want to close your eyes and light a candle. Then you move onto “A Face I Know”, an experimental track that includes mostly distorted guitars and synthesizers that blow your mind completely. At the end of the record, the song “Gay Peace” is an instrumental track that seems to take some country and folk inspiration. The sudden change of genre from track to track is both exciting and unanticipated. Each track being entirely different from one another is the most intriguing part of the record.
Although my opinion on extended play records has not changed much, I have finally found a recent EP that I can enjoy from the first track to the last and not be disappointed with a single portion of it. The 1900s have shown me a great deal of talent on a record that was composed of just unreleased tracks from the Cold & Kind sessions. I was more than pleasantly surprised when I heard this record and now I cannot help but continue to listen to it. Watch out for this band because their sophomore album should be a terrific record and I cannot wait to give it my undivided attention!
-Eric
