Boston Manor - Desperate times, Desperate Pleasures EP

 I have been in two minds whether to review the latest EP by Boston Manor - Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures.  I got into the band in 2020 through finding an EP on Spotify called "Plasticine Dreams" which had 5 tracks on it.  It was unbelievably good, and I only had to wait a month for their next album "Glue" to come out.  This contained all of the tracks released on the EP.  It was on that day I learned that when artists release songs on Spotify in the build up to an album it ends up calling itself an EP even when it’s really getting people exposure to the next album.  

For "Desperate times, Desperate Pleasures" though it is looking more and more like this is a standalone EP. One of the reasons for this is because it did get released on tape and also it has been out a fair while now with no proper announcement for an album yet.  So hopefully next thing we'll here from Boston Manor is a new album announcement with unreleased music. Fingers crossed!  So what do we have with this EP.  Well, I think the songs on here are a lot more straight up and simpler than songs on their last album "Glue". "Glue" went in all sorts of directions and the structures of the songs felt so ambitious and imaginative.  Overall, it was my top album of 2020 because of this.

"Carbon Mono" was the first single released off this EP and it rocks hard.  It's definitely one of those songs which has grown on me over time.  "Algorithm" was next and this has probably been one of my most played songs of last year.  Again, it feels really simple but it’s so effective.  Even when you look at the vocal performance. He doesn't really seem to fully stretch his vocals through most of the song.  But after the bridge he takes it up a gear and it just makes the song so wonderful. The bridge on here and the climb out of it is my favourite part of the whole EP.  It just strips back to the vocals and single guitar. Then everything else gradually comes back in for a thundering finish.

You can tell the EP was recorded during the pandemic as the overall feel of the EP is quite gloomy and downbeat.  You don't really need a private investigator to work it out. Songs like "I don't like people (&They don't like me)" kind of give the game away instantly.  That song also starts with "I haven't left my bedroom, for 16 days, and i don't see why I would do, when everything is so grey". I think in this EP they capture the mood of the nation through these troubled times and a lot can relate.

The title track "Desperate times, Desperate Pleasures" is another rocker.  I have noticed that Boston Manor are good at finding well known sayings and integrating them into their lyrics seamlessly.  "Bad Machine" being a good example of this from their second album.  "Let the right one in" is the last song on the EP and it’s a slower moving one but has just as much oomph and grandeur as the other songs.  

Overall, this is a fantastic EP which is looking like a stop gap as they make a new album which I am looking forward to tremendously.