"For every love song, there's a B-side"

San Francisco based quartet Birds & Batteries changed things up on their most recent album, the massively underrated Panorama, ditching the synth heavy darkness of the Up To No Good EP in favor of live instrumentation and sunnier vibes.  The result was a testament to the band's flexibility, placing Mike Sempert's soulful, longing vocals into a more natural habitat, serving as a nice detox from the band's more breathless electronic excursions.

But enough of that shit... Unfold finds the band busting out the synths again for a five song EP that could serve as the most forlorn dance party of all time.  In "Epic Fail", Sempert laments, "I wish that I could be some kind of love warrior, but now I know I'm not that strong".  These are not the words of a blissful, hula hoop twirling candy raver, but the introspective confessions of a broken man.  It's strange then that it's set to the most danceable set of music the band has ever produced.  Perhaps the tears of heartbreak help the molly go down? (it works for Cartman!)

Opener "Living Through Pictures" comes out swinging, with shredding distorted guitars and a syncopated synth bass line.  The chorus explodes over piano arpeggios while Sempert croons "Show me how it's done, how this living gets done".  In true Birds & Batteries fashion, the live instruments blend with the synths to make a uniquely organic sounding electro anthem.  The trend continues on "Greatest Minds", with a xylophone melody layering over a monstrous bass line.  It's a remarkably cohesive transition, coming from a band that typically wears it's incohesiveness on it's sleeve.  This is a more focused effort than anything I've heard from them.

Not that there aren't unpredictable moments.  "Trouble Makes Three" revels in it's darkness until an unexpectedly melancholy departure arrives mid-song.  Sempert sings, "Tell me everything, because there's a pain we share", before the song drops back into it's dark verse even harder.  It's a heartbreaking moment of clarity, as if the music is telling Sempert "we're no where near rock bottom yet".  "Epic Fail" follows, a rhythmic ballad with a matter of fact somberness that acts as a reflective contemplation of these dark proceedings.  "Unfold", the EP's title track and only instrumental, serves as an uplifting coda that carries us back out of the abyss.  I'm not sure what this band has been through since Panorama, but this EP is clearly exorcising some demons.  Fortunately for us, heartbreak has never been so funky.