The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die

Between Bodies EP

This nearly half-hour-long EP starts out incredibly promising. Experimental, atmospheric emo ensemble the World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die open “blank#8” (the title hinting it might be a prelude to the opening track from last year's Whenever, If Ever) with wind chimes and eerie, dragging noises that slowly unfold into a more major-key, wide-open sound… and then Chris Zizzamia comes in. The spoken-word poet and artist is a major collaborator with the band for Between Bodies, and his screeds do not gel with TWIABP's soundtrack.

On “Precipice,” the second half of the EP's opening track, one can hear the band otherwise achieving Sigur Rós-like heights of orchestral layering and breathtaking beauty beneath Zizzamia's exasperated, college-stoner-on-Def Jam Poetry takes on existentialism and universal creation. While he's not always spouting obvious truths about mortality, his goofy delivery and cadence deeply and immediately incite all sorts of negative feelings in the listener: namely irritability and exhaustion, ruining whatever beautiful moment the band's developing below him. It's a pity, too, because Between Bodies seems to contain some of the band's best material to date, with interesting, tied-in movements within itself, but the EP's rendered largely unlistenable by Zizzamia's ravings.

There are moments of saving grace, sure, and they come mostly when Zizzamia's absent: the second half of “If And When I Die”; the cutesy, keyboard-inflected, bouncy indie pop of “Thanks”; the acoustic-heavy, froggily hymnal “$100 Tip.”; and the memorable call-and-response refrain that closes out the EP on “Autotonsorialist.” Zizzamia almost seems to momentarily fit within the flow of “Shoppers Beef,” but his relentless, unfocused energy again goes off the rails at some point. If you think the idea of Listener doing vocal outtakes over the Appleseed Cast's Low Level Owl: Volume 1 sounds like a fantastic idea, check out Between Bodies. Everyone else, let's hope this is a one-off.

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“Thanks”