Torche - Songs for Singles (Album Review)

Torche - Songs for Singles
Release date: September 21, 2010 (Hydra Head Records)

When the biggest complaint you can come up with about a particular album is that it's over way too quickly, that's usually a sign that it's a really good fucking album. Such is the case with Songs for Singles, the latest release from Florida "doom pop" trio Torche. It's the band's first release (outside of one song on a 2009 split single with Boris) without founding guitarist Juan Montoya, but the band hasn't lost any of their signature heft.

At eight songs and barely more than 20 minutes, this EP is a maddeningly brief followup to Torche's exceptional 2008 full-length Meanderthal, which itself was barely more than 35 minutes long. Despite its brevity, however, Songs still offers memorable moments aplenty. It's very much in the same vein as Meanderthal, featuring short, fuzzy bursts of metallic pop rock. Anyone hoping for a return to the sludgier sound of the band's earlier work should probably move on, or just stick to the recent eight-disc Floor box set.

Gifts From Enola - Gifts From Enola (Album Review)

Gifts From Enola - Gifts From Enola
Release date: July 13, 2010 (The Mylene Sheath)

On their new self-titled album, Harrisonburg, Va. quintet Gifts From Enola sound like a band that's ready to step out of the shadow of their post-pock forebears and cement a legacy of their own. Gifts From Enola is one of those rare bands that manages to somehow sound familiar, yet unlike anything you've heard before. Comparisons to the usual post-rock suspects like Pelican and Isis certainly aren't unwarranted, but repeated listens to GFE's third album reveal that the band's influences stretch well beyond the last five years or so of Hydra Head releases.