The Spill Canvas

Realities

Although the Spill Canvas are working on their fifth album, the South Dakota foursome continue to release stopgap EPs in the interim. This five-song disc follows shortly on the heels on their three-song teaser, Abnormalities, which came out in January and offered a brief sense of where the group are heading. In a shifting musical climate, where online and increasingly frequent releases are becoming necessary to remain relevant, it's one hand nice to get regular updates from the Spill Canvas like this. On the other, you almost want to say, "You've clearly got the songs, just put out an album already!"



Realities shows more breadth than Abnormalities, not just because it contains more songs but because frontman Nick Thomas seems to be branching out in his stylistic tendencies. This is a strikingly good thing on "Dust Storm," a hooky number that happily embraces simplistic instrumentation and production to create a straight forward rocker, as well as the bouncing pop-rock closer "Crash Course." However, on "Let Go," Thomas' newfound exploration goes awry: The track starts out in a typical Spill Canvas style, hooky lines and tongue-twisting lyrics, but eventually descends into spoken word with gospel-esque female backup vocals. Thomas' voice is one of the band's strongest attributes; it's unsettling and just plain unlistenable when he tries to speak-rap a verse.



Overall, Realities is another amiable, engaging EP from the Spill Canvas, with choruses you'll want to sing along to. But let's just cut to chase and finally hear the record they've been working on already.

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