Ee

Item: For 100 We Try Harder
Author: Brett Miotti

For 100 We Try Harder

(2002)

Reviewed by Brett Miotti

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Label Asian Man RecordsDecapolisOctober 2002

indie rock jangle pop

Ee (pronounced like the letter "e") hail from the west coast. For 100 We Try Harder is the debut full length on Asian Man Records for the band.

I am totally unfamiliar with this band except that I recognize guitarist Sooyoung Park as being a member of the band Seam. Anyway I was given this CD to review recently and to be honest I thought I wasn't going to like it. I have no idea why I thought that except that maybe I thought I was long overdue to write a review where I didn't give out an A or a B. Well, looks like that'll have to wait longer still. I am pleased to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by what Ee was bringing to my ears. This quartet plays chimey, atmospheric, jangly, ebb-and-flowy indie rock. And they do it quite well. Only a handful of tracks have vocals, which gives this album a slightly similar vibe to The Appleseed Cast's Low Level Owl recordings. And I'll probably get ridiculed for this, but I'm not real familiar enough with Seam to know how much Park's existence in that band influences Ee's sound. Ee will seemingly flow effortlessly from simple mellow strumming or tinkling to full out blasts of guitar mastery in the next moment creating a grand tapestry of indie rock excellence. However, the absence of vocals in some songs can cause some tracks to drag on, especially for listeners with short attention spans. This CD could not have entered my CD player at a better time though, for I was actually in the mood for something just like this.

B-