My esteemed colleague, Theodore Defosse, wrote earlier this year in these hallowed web pages a review of Lefty's Deceiver's previous release, Conversations on Favored Nations. In said review, he noted the fact that one of the reasons that this band was developing a considerable following was lead singer Andy Williams, who "sounds like a young American Andy Partridge raised on Braid". While I admire his analogy, I can't shake the feeling that Mr. Williams' vocal style more closely resembles Superchunk's Mac McCaughan being consensually beaten with a cat-o'-nine tails. Or something like that. I must also agree with Mr. Defosse's overall assessment of the band as derivative yet still appealing. This is a seven-track EP, the first track of which is given over to feedback, so really we're dealing with six compositions of the sort that are the band's bread and butter. I guess you'd have to call them emo, but they're not as screamy or abrasive as the bands I like best in that genre (Cursive, Marion Delgado, Sunny Day Real Estate); they do, however, bear several hallmarks of the genre (loud-soft dynamics, snappy drumming, relationships gone wrong). Among the highlights of these tracks is the opening of "January's Flight", in which the bass line almost exactly imitates Sugar's "A Good Idea", and which develops into a nicely-put-together rock song with a truly gorgeous cello-enhanced bridge. In point of fact, all of these songs are well-written and enjoyable, though the lyrics tend toward the strange combination of awkward erudition and triteness that seems to be emo's hallmark. In fact, the band is so straightforward and earnest that it's hard to see who they think they're deceiving.