I figured this EP deserved a shot in my player from the instant I saw they had a track called “Saskatchewan Pool.” (Okay, you got me; I’m a sucker for Canadian prairie references in albums. Now you know. Bombard me with your best recordings!)

By excellent fate though, I discovered they were not a one-trick-pony sort of band. Thank God. With all the Broken-Arcade-Voices-From-The-Montreal-Wearing-Scarves groups out there it’s a relief to hear one that knows how to weave instrumentation, dipping in and out of the melody with the best harmonies available.

BBE are quiet and understated. You won’t be hit over the head by the songs but you’ll be tugged, twitched, and cajoled into their stream of things, and then before you know it you’re off and away. “Victor,” a sunny road-trip sort of diddy, surprises with a soft, violin-centric verse before a slapping guitar-and-cymbal dance interrupts during the chorus, then it all veers off the highway and into the wild grasses of adjacent off-roads.

“I thought love was a losing game,” sings Chelsey Walsh in “Losing Game,” “…but still I’m soft when I think of you.” Her voice is vulnerable but lithe, tumbling like an acrobat over the nimble cymbals and brass. I love how she can make it stand in the foreground, or move as yet another instrument in the collective; she wields such effortless control that I am silenced into admiration.

Bent By Elephants has only offered us a taste with this 6-song EP so fertile with concepts and talent. A full-length album might be the perfect vehicle to properly show off their clever musical enclave.

Track Listing:

1. Mollie’s Song
2. City Lights
3. Victor
4. Losing Game
5. Saskatchewan Pool
6. Wrecker In The Dark