All of Us/None of Us: Beggar My Neighbour …. Sooner or Later for your Monday headache

Sooner Or Later mp3 All of Us/None of Us Beggar My Neighbour,…. buy it!
This EP haunts me, and October is the perfect month to introduce it to you. Sometimes music sits in my inbox for weeks months and I listen to it after finding it buried in a forest of emails that I’ve not answered or filtered through yet. Sometimes I listen to it for a few more weeks months and then finally let you all in on it. Naughty, huh?! I hope you forgive me for this one. All of Us/None of Us’ Beggar My Neighbour is absolutely haunting.

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It’s got that heavy, dark, sexy bass and vocals that emphasize the downbeat, offset by the barest of electronic accenting notes. I’m hearing a couple of bands like this from LA, maybe it’s just me… that bands like this send me their stuff, but I tend to think there’s a little pocket of funked-out, garagey, post-90s bands putting out great music like this. If you go to my search box and put in “Jumpiter” you’ll hear a little bit of what I mean, a slight similarity, an attitude, a DIYness that is at the same time completely professional. All of Us/None of Us have put out their latest EP, Beggar My Neighbour, and it’s a beautiful collection of four tracks, showcasing their bluesy, funk-inspired, California alt-rock.

It’s the songs, of course that are important here, not what I think about the “sound” of what All of Us/None of Us are going for. So I’ll focus on the songs, and songwriting is also what this band does well. And with their new drummer, it’s come together nicely. The static in the background of “Almost Never” with that not-quite Nirvana feel to it, made me sit up and notice, and then the break… it’s the break where the guitar solo starts that makes that song so great, I finally decided. “Ropeless” shows off some lyrical chops, and again, it’s the break… the Beatle-esque guitar strumming that comes so unexpectedly with that funky chorus… that makes it memorable. But it’s “Sooner or Later” that has burrowed into my brain. The chill of the chords as their struck, and of the words; this song is a killer. There’s so many little details to it that on my fifth or sixth listen I’m still finding ways they’ve made it seem so alienated. The way they’ve layered the vocals so that words overlap only at the beginning of some phrases, as if you were coming in and out of a befuddled haze and just piecing it together. And that water-droplet tone that repeats just bores into your head. This song just embodies such a hangover headache, all those bad thoughts you have after a night you’re already regretting.

Eric and Rob are living in the same city finally (LA, in case you missed that part.) They play out once in a while, mostly focusing on producing an EP a year and making really good music. If anyone out there’s heard them live, I’d love a report. I’m smitten with these EPs, I honestly am. I know us bloggers get a bad rap for liking obscure music, as if the more obscure it is the better we think it is. I hope by now you know me better than that. I’d love nothing more than for millions of you to know this band. Go download their EP (and pay a bit more than their suggested $2, eh?!) play a track or two at your next party or on your next mixtape. Send off a tweet about it. That’s how stuff gets started, it’s the little things that add up, honest xoxo