Artist: The Globes

Album: Sinter Songs EP

Label: Self-released

Release date: April 2010

Rating (Skip, Stream, or Buy): Buy (It’s waiting for you at Easy Street or Sonic Boom)

Download: No downloads! Buy! But you can stream “Stay Awake” on their MySpace page

The four songs on the Globes’ Sinter Songs EP play out like orchestral compositions -layers of guitar and harmonized vocals move forward, loop back, and circle around like swirling ocean gyres. This band is just much too innovative and complex for any standard verse-chorus-bridge formulas. Sinter Songs marks the Globes’ gradual move away from the worn-out territory of moody Northwest indie pop and into a more provocative sphere of textured math rock with an accessible edge – the music is both technically meticulous and emphatically, desperately emotional.

The band’s two vocalists, Erik Walters and Kyle Musselwhite, have similar understated deliveries. Musselwhite is brooding on “A Stitch Couldn’t Save The World;” Walters is halting and tentative on “Untitled.” There’s a reason for the vocal restraint – the Globes’ mastery of their craft, demonstrated in their intricate instrumentation, is the star here. It’s the snapping percussion that wakes up “A Stitch,” the fluid guitars that cohere “Untitled”‘s vacillating melodies.

Sinter Songs‘ standout track is the opener, “Stay Awake.” The song opens with tense and clanking percussion before breaking into a buzzy synth, rolling bass, and melting guitar lines that take the forefront as Walters sings, “I want something new/ I want something more/ From you.” It’s a devastating song, dismissing one moment and begging for empathy the next. Seattle’s full of rock bands that can show off an impressive level of technical savvy. I just haven’t heard any that made me care this much.