Whilst an unconventional release strategy has been getting Radiohead more attention than any band could use, Glassjaw have slipped out a pair of EPs all but unnoticed. Unless you follow Daryl Palumbo on Twitter (@DarylPalumboCC) or habitually check the band’s site for new, you’d be hard pressed to know that they were putting out new material: I haven’t seen coverage on any of the big music blogs as yet.

The release strategy opted for is perhaps best described as wilfully obtuse. It started with fans being posted blank pieces of cardboard and only got stranger from there. New music was released one track at a time on sequential date & month matching days: i.e. the track ‘Jesus Glue’ was released on 9/9, ‘Natural Born Farmer’ was released on 10/10(/10) etc. The releases were vinyl only, accompanied by a single-take web promo, with a $1 digital download following a month later.

Things got even crazier for the release of the November track ‘Stars’; from Wikipedia:

Interested fans were required to visit Mario’s Pizzeria in Seaford, New York at 1:11pm on 11/11/2010 and order “The Glassjaw” for $11.11. Inside a special box contained a personal-pizza and the ‘Stars’ 7″ vinyl, and the first 88 recipients were also given an invitation to a secret event at 11:11pm at an unknown address printed on the box…. [T]he event was for the music video filming of the unreleased song ‘Black Nurse’.

In total five tracks were released this way, and then collated into an EP titled Our Color Green which was released in January ’11. By that time the band’s site had been altered to an announcement of another EP, to be called Coloring Book, which is currently only available, free of charge, at shows.

That is unless you can find somewhere to download it from, something I had no qualms about doing being that a) they’re not asking for money for it anyway; and b) there is currently no other way of obtaining the music in the UK. For those same reasons I feel OK about posting a stream of opening track ‘Black Nurse’ here; a short review of the new material follows.

(photo by Tommy Au)

Though it’s tempting to put these two EPs together and consider them as one release, the music doesn’t make that easy or profitable. The five tracks released as singles lack cohesion, with their strongest connection being perhaps that they wouldn’t belong on Coloring Book. ‘Natural Born Farmer’ is perhaps the most similar to the sound of Glassjaw’s previous releases, and also the most complete track. It is an expertly handled mix of melody and energy that pulls no punches. The same could be said for ‘All Good Junkies Go to Heaven’; the pair of tracks leave no doubt that the passion remains for Glassjaw as a project – something which was in doubt among even the band’s hardcore faithful after more than eight years of silence. Interestingly, though these two songs in particular recall the band’s 2000 debut Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, ‘Jesus Glue’ points even further back, to a pair of 1995 records. The vocal is sometimes reminiscent of Mike Patton’s performance on King for a Day… Fool for a Lifetime, and the spacious production arrangement recalls Deftones’ debut Adrenaline.

Even if the five songs don’t sit all that well together, its a strong set of material which could represent half of a great album if sequenced differently; if it was to be subsumed into an LP release perhaps one track, ‘You Think You’re (John Fucking Lennon)’, could be dropped without being missed. Clearly the weakest of the five, it feels a little unfinished – more like the seed of a song than the finished article.

The six tracks of Coloring Book are a different story: released as an EP they clearly belong together and represent something of a step forward for the Glassjaw sound. The track above, ‘Black Nurse’, incorporates some latin sounding elements with a great sense of menace, and sits brilliantly alongside the dense, winding snake of ‘Gold’, a muscular track showcasing great drumming and a high, cycling guitar element.

‘Vanilla Poltergeist Snake’ introduces electronic stabs amongst the prancing bass line and supplements the percussion with subtle use of a drum machine at points. The use of an electronic siren-like sound is reminiscent of Tom Morello – as is the distorted guitar line which drives ‘Miracle in Inches’. The production is spacious to great effect, where the easier choice may have been to opt for something claustrophobic.

The final two tracks represent another shift in gear. Warm and hazy with prominent electronic elements and percussion light and woody or performed with brushes, the closest connection in the band’s back catalogue is perhaps Worship & Tribute era b-side ‘Convectuoso’. When the EP’s closer ‘Daytona White’ breaks apart into washes of distorted guitar which fade in and out alongside cycling drums it’s impressive to consider how much ground is covered on these six tracks.