Ought: Once More With Feeling…

Once More With Feeling… is a quick and generous follow-up to Ought’s excellent break-though record, More Than Any Other Day. For this EP, initially conceived as a tour-only release, the band revisited early material and re-recorded it. The results are dynamic and impressive, both doubling down on and expanding outward the charms of the band’s previous record. “Pill” is a slow-burning opener, starting with soft, echoing guitars and vocals that eventually erupt into raucous crescendos. “New Calm Pt. 2” is seven-minutes of hard-edged and charging rock, replete with wandering storytelling that can bellow at us as well as perform a mid-party phone call. It’s followed by the largely instrumental noise experiment “New Calm Pt. 2”. The final track here, “Waiting”, is from the More Than Any Other Day sessions, and finds the band at its most coiled-up and zealous. All these songs have a nervous edge to them, but if Ought cut their teeth on post-punk tension, they also break from it here into various and compelling new directions. All that expansion at the edges of their last record only continues to stretch out on this new EP. This is a band without borders, one that can pull in all directions without snapping.