The Ettes – Danger Is EP

A three-piece garage rock band hailing from Los Angeles by way of New York, The Ettes deliver a small dose of their admirably simplistic throbbing rock on Danger Is. This is a hybrid studio and live EP, though, with the quality unfortunately skewed far in favour of the studio recordings. Perhaps unsurprisingly it's mostly sound quality which is deficient on the two live songs "The Rules" and "I Heard Tell", recorded at LA's Steve Allen Theatre and Arlene's Grocery in New York respectively. The former sounds OK at first, but once the song gets going properly, the cymbals completely destroy the acuity of the recording, displaying just how scrappily recorded these two songs are - this EP would be a lot better without them. The Ettes may want to attract us to their apparently raucous live show, but this is definitely not a wise way to go about it, these attractions sounding like they were recorded from the outside of an asylum's most thickly padded room.Luckily the live tracks are the conclusion of the EP, so it's pretty easy to avoid listening to them once it becomes clear how little they add to proceedings. The first three tracks are left for more polished studio songs - or as polished as this kind of rock goes, for much of the band's appeal is from their rough-edged aggression. The studio songs allow singer Lindsay "Coco" Hames' mildly acidic voice to shine. Her tones dip the sharp edges of this sound in a little poison; her sweetly venomous vocals are one of the band's foremost tools. Her backing is among the simplest, most stripped-down rock you're likely to find - this power trio are extremely riff-based, and when those rollicking riffs die out for a few seconds, the pounding drums continue patiently for them to return at the dawn of a new chorus or verse. All this is taking a mild influence from all manner of 60s musical phenomena, fused with a little punk energy by way of the Strokes et al. It's almost embarassingly but devastatingly simple, the template for what is, besides those space-wasting live cuts, a thoroughly exciting and appealing set of songs.As an added bonus, Take Root Records have seen fit to bestow this EP upon us in the form of an enhanced CD, containing videos for three songs not on the EP - "Crown of Age", "I Get Mine", and "Marathon". The first of these is the best, musically and as a video, but all three are worth watching and add quite a bit more reason to consider getting hold of Danger Is. 68%The Ettes on MySpace