mp3: Snowden "Don't Really Know Me"

mp3: Snowden "Don't Really Know Me"

Snowden's got a new EP and it's different to say the least. No more quick jabs that make you double over with glee. Instead, the fan who just remembers those bouncy jangled jams might be surprised with the turn towards the slo-mo.

In "Don't Know Really Know Me," Jeffares' voice keeps echoing "And you don't want to know...because you don't really know me." Well, maybe we do and maybe we don't.

Back in 2006-07 or something like that, Snowden was one of those bands I was fascinated with. Here was a guy struggling to write a few songs in Athens, GA. But the songs Jordan Jeffares came up with fit the cultural moment as snugly as any Von Dutch hat, popped collar of UGGS shoe ever would.

Snowden churned out an album of bouncy, kind of dancey, new-wave ish songs, like a fuzzier Interpol. And then, bam, Jade Tree Records snatched them up like a fresh Hot Pocket out of the microwave, with a deal that could potentially jolt to them to the top of indie rock. After all this was the label of Alkaline Trio, Pedro The Lion, Jets To Brazil.

And Anti-Anti was released and featured some really awesome songs: title track "Anti-Anti," "Between The Rent" "Like Bullets."

But sometime in 2008 (?), Jeffares wanted out of the three-record deal and he was a free agent. In 2008, he told Creative Loafing:

"I never wanted to write rock songs," Jeffares says. "If anything on Anti-Anti sounds like rock songs, it's because I was trying to get heels to move on the dancefloor in a live setting. When you're a young band, all you have is the live show, and it's hard to win people over with pretty and melodic," he says. "Radiohead had to write The Bends before they could do an album like Kid A, and that's how I've thought of Snowden's albums."

Now a new free EP Slow Soft Syrup has emerged on Noise Trade (download here) and it's a moodier, more introspective, more 80s slow new wave trudge, riding somewhere between The Smiths on synth and Thom Yorke at his saddest.

My hopes are to the highest that Jeffares isn't writing off all of his rock n roll prowess as he indicated above, those were excellent and I could keep perfect time on my steering wheel. Apparently, Jeffares just moved to Brooklyn awhile back, so let's see what comes out of that. Hopefully it doesn't drive him further to "chill-wave" but let's him realize that what Anti-Anti had wasn't so despicable after all.

We'll soon find out as a new album is set to drop in a few months...