Saucer

Saucer sports some fairly interesting organization, so far as records go: tracks one through five are a studio-recorded EP, but the release also tacks on 25 short songs home-recorded on a four-track. The material from this EP itself is quite appealing, tossing off pleasant pop/rock songs from an indie standpoint (and frequently approaching a sloppy pop sound that falls in line with Pavement, the 3-D's, or Yatsura), but the record's true points of interest crop up among the home recordings, which have the simplistic pop qualities of early Kleenex Girl Wonder releases. With a surprising level of consistency, the band wanders through tinny synth sounds, loungey jazz experiments, primitive pop songs, and lo-fi rock gems, and while some tracks falter, an extraordinary number of hidden gems surface as well. Listening through these 25 tracks, one can never really guess where the band will head next, and this turns out be a very good thing, as each inventive turn manages to be more interesting and more charming that one might have expected, without sacrificing any of the pop focus of the more conventional EP tracks.