Customer Reviews

Now

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This EP is mainly worth picking up for the Stones cover. If you're new to BoS, I recommend starting with Love Agenda or the Peel Sessions.

When they issued "Now", the Band of Susans had finally developed a settled lineup after numerous changes during the recording of their first three albums. After The Word and the Flesh, they decided to record a short EP containing a famous Stones cover, a couple of new originals, and a remix of "Now Is Now".

It is true that it is sufficiently hard to distinguish the remix from the original version to make it less than essential, but that does not mean the Susans have lost their unique sound. The opening track, "Pearls of Wisdom", is exactly what one would expect from the group: dense, amazingly melodic guitars over Stenger's dreamy, ethereal voice and Spitzer's hypnotic drumming. The second and third tracks, "Following My Heart" and "Trash Train", can be seen as one piece developing from a ballad to loud, but never overblown, post-rock. In the first part, the guitars can be, unusually for the Susans, heard as discrete individuals rather than a symphony, but Poss' despair is surprising and the simple rhythm is truly stark. Then the band turn on the fastest and fiercest minute of its entire career without any warning, and after a fairly slow intro "Trash Train" keeps up in that vein remarkably persistently.

The cover of "Paint It Black" (both in vocal and instrumental versions) is much softer, almost like folk, and perhaps lacks the stunning sense one gets from most of the Susans' best records. It still has a touchign quality that fits the despairing mood so evident on the rest of "Now", and Stenger shows she can still sing well in a higher range than her normal contralto.

All in all, "Now" does suffer from being poorly thought out, even poorly programmed (why weren't "Following My Heart" and "Trash Train" made into one track as they sound like they should be) but it still shows that one of "modern" rock's most underrated bands could still grow even after two definite masterpieces.