When too many layers of sound are forced into a song's landscape, at some point the piece crosses the threshold to redundancy. Aloha begins this EP neck-deep in overwrought track stuffing with "The Sound Between." You're hearing all the worst excesses these near-musos have to offer-- they like jazz, they really like the Sea and Cake, and they're going to tell you all about it. If they're not copping the most obvious aspects of the former, they're sheepishly imitating the latter. Note to Earth: never use the word "aperture" in a song. It sticks out like a hard-on in gym class.

"Roanoke Born" is as indebted to Prekop and Co. as anything out there, but it's not so entrenched in jazz preening, which consequently makes for much more pleasant listening. The introduction is probably the best thing on the record, but the tension it builds constructs a house you've already lived in for three or four years if you own Sea and Cake's The Fawn.

It's only toward the record's end that sensible, appreciable music rises to the surface. On "Gary's Narrator" and "I Never Use the Shoreway," Aloha get their egos in check and compose a pretty decent catalog of most bands' debts to the Chicago class of 1995. I'm not saying it makes the record worth buying, but hey, if you've already got it, save your friends the hassle and throw these two on a mix tape. They're jazzy, but they're not jazz-- it'll add an air of sophistication!

On a five song EP, a note of filler can bring the whole record down. And The Great Communicators' final track, "Ayahuasca at Dawn," teases with three minutes of synthesized nonsense, and then descends into a long-winded ProTools jack-off session. The use of ProTools editing was only painfully obvious earlier in the record-- now it's just painful, and any appreciation you had for Aloha's material runs screaming from the room. If you must try to like Aloha, do not listen to the last track on this record.

-Chris Ott