Oh yeah, you thought you were stuck with the Teargas EP for two years. Well now you have the Tonight’s Music EP, chock full of three songs… Straight from the Last Fair Deal sessions, you have two more B-sides and the title track. I guess since the songs on this EP are soft and the songs on the Teargas EP are heavy, you could call them the yin-yang EP’s…
Anyhoo, after the title track, you get Help Me Disappear. A pretty standard song, but simple in a way that gives the instruments freedom to improvise a bit in some parts, usually drum-wise. Jonas sounds like he’s putting a lot into his vocals during the verses, but the chorus sounds a bit lackluster for some reason. The break in the song is also kinda average for the band. If this song was on Last Fair Deal, it would’ve probably taken away from the spirit (or lack of) the album built up throughout.
Finally, we have a cover song! O How I Enjoy The Light is a nice little song by Will Oldham, but thankfully Jonas didn’t cover his ridiculously out of key vocals. They do, however, sound very careless and somewhat aggravated but too hopeless to become angry. The music isn’t much changed from the original aside from the use of electric guitars rather than acoustic and a few synths fading in and out.
I should mention that the B-sides from these EP’s appear as bonus tracks on the reissue of Last Fair Deal Gone Down, except for the Will Oldham cover, which got shafted for some reason, but that song is on the Black Sessions compilation with all the other B-sides all the way up to Viva Emptiness. Um…that’s about it folks...I’m gonna go now.