Loose Lips Sink Ships/El Pin Meldou – “The Contemporary Issues of Celibacy EP”

Rating: 7.5

Loose Lips Sink Ships are probably the best live band in DeKalb right now.

I like to go to their shows — whether they’re at an actual venue or just in the basement of a crummy party — just to see them trade wicked duel guitar licks and then stop on a dime in a way that makes the headliners look like doofuses. It’s good to hear that for the most part, the excitement and queasy, herk-jerk intensity of their live set remains intact on this EP.

I hate to throw around terms such as “post-rock” or “math-rock” as much as the next guy, but those are the genres that are hard to get away when listening to Loose Lips music.

The spastically melodic clean guitar figures that transition abruptly, yet easily, into pure, exultant crunch power chords and suspended seconds while the bassist injects his own complex, melodic bass lines and the drummer continuously betrays his high school jazz band alumni status. They even have non-sequitur song titles in the grand tradition of Don Caballero and Minus the Bear.

That isn’t to say that Loose Lips are copycats or unimaginative; they have a style and urgency that’s uniquely theirs.

Plus they rock.

Opener “Oh, Debit” is the quintessential Loose Lips tune. Opening with ghostly female vocals before transitioning into a terse and immediate chord progression interspersed with a playful miasma of errant guitar notes.

The band journeys through a series of mini suites, probably climaxing with some sweet Explosions in the Sky-esque tremolo picking, but it’s hard to tell with these multi-orgasmic bands. The “Karl Malone” song is another one of my favorites, especially because of the closing weirdo harmonics.

This EP is 47 minutes, which I think disqualifies it as an EP, and likewise, it runs too long. The tracks that the band collaborated with El Pin Meldou (a bizarro world version of themselves) are not as captivating as the first half of the record, serving better as background music than recording your close attention.

Still, this is pretty exciting and densely virtuosic music, and I’d put it up against anything else recorded by any other band in this sleepy town.