Bedroom pop duo Cal in Red (brothers Connor and Kendall Wright) have released their new EP, The Days. Currently on their headline autumn tour, The Days is Cal in Red’s follow-up to last year’s acclaimed debut LP Low Low.
“The Days feels like an undoing as much as a return to form,” says Kendall Wright. “Everything felt fresh with this one. All the music we had up until a year ago was either put on Low Low or scrapped altogether.”
A dreamy, gentle EP made up of six tracks of guitar-forward indie hits, there’s something decidedly ‘uneasy’ about the EP, almost as if the music was deliberately created to mimic the difficult, restless feeling of someone waking themself up just on the brink of sleeping.
What The Days has on the Low Low is definitely improved production; the ideas aren’t new, but they feel fresher in this more fleshed-out guise the band's created, and more sure of themselves. The dichotomy of the tracks’ melancholy late-summer sound and the sharpness of the production is almost perfect–my only complaint is that I would enjoy this EP even more if it were twice the length.
The particular standout track is “Smile, You’re Here,” which is reminiscent of late-career Sugarcult on their third album. It’s the darkest song on the EP, with spliced-in spoken audio halfway through. It drones and loops, and it’s wonderful.
