Review Summary: You should probably hear this, even if you probably won't.
Those of us who live in the small (population: 17,633) and rich (median household income: $194,362) town of Wilton, Connecticut, got a small surge of excitement when the reviews for 2007 drama
There Will Be Blood started coming in. Why? Paul Dano. The Wilton native, who had been growing steadily in stature thanks to movies like 2006's
Little Miss Sunshine, had just given his best performance yet (as both slightly-insane preacher Eli Sunday and his brother Paul Sunday) and the critics were taking notice. Though he was about to join the ranks of Wiltonians Dave Brubeck and Christopher Walken, however, Dano had a quite laidback appearance when I saw his band Mook play at the local library. He introduced himself and the band to the enthusiastic crowd, and then started, well, playing. A good thirty minutes of mellow jazz-inflected rock music, and Dano barely bothered to "celebrate" or acknowledge his own film career.
So perhaps it's fitting that it's this kind of humble nonchalance that marks the band's first release,
The Eggs EP, presumably released off the heels of the filming of Paul Dano's
There Will Be Blood performance in 2006. If such a comparison can be made,
The Eggs is pretty much the opposite of that film, a smooth (yet uneasy) performance of confidently written songs. The release starts with "Quiet Sounds", which starts off by confusing you with its juxtapositions of rhythms and tempos. The song's keyboard line gives the song a lumbering feel, with each rhythm hitting like a boulder. Before the band throw on some shrieking guitar effects for the kind-of solo, the track goes through a few confusing changes, only to come out triumphant in the end.
As well as their unorthodox musical style, the band also introduces another key element in "Quiet Sounds": Paul Dano's voice. Dano has an uneasy aura when he sings, over-pronouncing and stumbling on every word he vocalizes with his Gibbard-like nervousness. Throughout the EP, Dano's voice is at the forefront, and though it may divide listeners, it gives the music a fidgety charisma.
Mook's songwriting overall is a little unorthodox, with lopsided melodies, disturbing bits of noise and dissonance (the band almost sounds like, with a few years time (and a few more listens of
Loveless), they could become the new Yo La Tengo), and overlapping rhythms. At the end of second track "Statues", the band suddenly switch up rhythms and bring out whistles and cowbells, turning the song from a jazzy rocker into a sort of demented fiesta.
As well as the majority of "Statues", the rest of Mook's music is very jazz-influenced, but, instead of being, say, big-band, is confined to the timbre and instrumentation of a small rock band. This "conflict", for the most part, works very well, especially considering the band's songwriting needs no extra horn lines or extra instrumentation. Even so, closer "Broken-Bee (Light Me)" is still there as an example of what
The Eggs would sound like had the band not been raised on jazzy chords and rhythms. Sounding like a lost Death Cab for Cutie track, the song barely has more than an acoustic guitar and Dano's cooing, but it works excellently, its sparse instrumentation and soft melody having a calming effect.
Overall,
The Eggs is an extremely strong release from a promising band. Now that Dano's film career has taken off, it's a shame that we might not see much more from Mook. Throughout this release, we see a band that is willing to take risks and come out on top in the end. Considering the usual quality of actors-gone-musicians' releases, you can't ask for much more than that.
