Review Summary: The Educator is a short, memorable, and very fun listen that I would recommend to anyone with a taste for fun indie rock.
I really enjoy it when a band makes an album where each track sounds completely different from each another. As in, each individual song has its own unique voice to it.
The Educator, the fifth extended play from
How Scandinavian, utilizes this individuality technique very well.
The EP starts out with the title-track, which sounds like an intriguing mix of Weezer's quirky vocal performances and Unwound's early Indie-punk guitar work, making for a very catchy and memorable listen. The instrumentation is very tight and precise, each instrument making a name for itself not only in the title track, but the entire 20-minute EP. After "The Educator", the band makes a complete 180 turn with the jazzy "Necessary Gesture", where both the bass and guitars perfectly work off of each other to create a very well-thought out instrumental.
The only bad track I could find off of this record would be "Caroline, No", in which the vocals simply whine over an uninteresting acoustic instrumental section for three minutes. "Caroline, No" is essentially a filler track hiding in an otherwise greatly cohesive EP.
The Educator is a short, memorable, and very fun listen that I would recommend to anyone with a taste for fun indie rock.