Eskimo & Sons, How Does It Feel... (Boy Gorilla)

[August 8th, 2007]

[SLEEPY POP] "They put women with white teeth/ Inside every TV screen," Danielle Sullivan sings on "2012," her perfect voice trembling like a leaf over songwriter Dhani Rosa's lonesome bass line. "She said expect some rain/ But a tidal wave came/ And the sky connected with the sea."

That simple line—and the soft orchestra that rises up like sea foam in its wake—should be enough to blow the dust off even the most neglected imagination, carrying a listener quickly and discreetly into Eskimo & Sons' world. It's also the lyric that launches the band's brilliant second EP, How Does It Feel to be Crushed by One Man With the Strength of a Million?

The flood (a recurring theme in Rosa's highly visual songwriting) is one in a handful of natural and familial disasters that plague How Does It Feel's characters, but dead fathers, stampeding beasts and sick best friends are all met with the same naive emotional optimism. Perhaps because Rosa and his bandmates were in middle school when planes crashed into buildings live on the morning news (most of the band is 19 or 20 years old), Rosa's songs are less love-pop clichés than mini survival guides for Generation Fucked. On "2012," that means ushering friends into the safe haven of a (literally) homemade boat.

Rosa's imaginative lyrics and Sullivan's jaw-dropping delivery are matched at every turn by drummer Dylan Reed and keyboardist Thomas Himes, as well. On "The Blizzard," for example, Himes' reversed synth loops and overcast piano meet Reed's complex breakbeats, perfectly underscoring Rosa's haunting words. But the album's most ambitious track is the nearly 11-minute-long "No Elephant." It tells the story of a carnival barker who brings a great, exotic beast home from a foreign expedition, presenting it to the public in the midst of great fanfare. "There is nothing that can't be yours/ Of the oceans or of the dirt," the P.T. Barnum character tells the crowd. And for a moment, you believe it: If incredible songs like these can be penned by a high-school dropout (Rosa) and sung by a girl who spent years stricken by stage fright (Sullivan), what the hell is holding you back?

Then the song's beast breaks free and tramples the entire crowd to death. .