Matt and Kali arrived in Portland two years ago with an indie-folk album written and recorded in Kali’s bedroom. Two thousand eight’s One Shoe Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was “almost entirely Kali and I,” says Matt, adding that they often had to coax friends to fill in the instrumental gaps on stage as there was no fixed line up for the East Coast Junkies.

This EP is about friends – the two new songs are tunes we wrote for old friends going through tough times, and the two old songs were remixed by new friends in Portland. We recorded the new tracks at our house in Portland with cables running from the basement to the bedroom to the shower to the room where the computer is, and then were fortunate enough to have Leigh Marble and Tom Filepp (aka Cars & Trains) contribute some reworkings of songs from our last album (One Shoe Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 2008).

Lyrically, there’s something of a theme here. Unprecedented (relative) wealth and convenience seems to have a flipside for our generation – unprecedented dread, anxiety, and seemingly unprovoked depression. We see it in our friends, in ourselves, in the news, in art. So we were thinking, don’t wait for the rescue squad – the EMTs are going to be late because they’re at home trying to shake guilt that was somehow instilled in them when they were kids. It’s not advice you see given very often right now – you need a counselor, you need a bailout, you need a prescription, you need a makeover. But it’s the advice we decide to give ourselves, and it seemed appropriate for this EP title. “Jenny” is for a friend who was thinking she needed someone else to be whole, “French Girls” and “Windows” are about waiting around for something to happen, and “Dracula” is about kicking Dracula’s ass if you happen to meet him. Ultimately, since we’re tired of all the heavy stuff we see around us (including this write-up – sorry), we tried to make the songs as upbeat and fun as possible. So enjoy. And we’re giving this EP away freely and gratefully, but if you’d like to tip us as we try to figure out the financial underbelly to making music, you can also name your own price on it here or at any of the online music stores it’ll be up on.

Special thanks to Ezra Johnson-Greenough for pretty much everything, Tom Filepp and Leigh Marble for the beautiful remixes, Oran Stainbrook for the beautiful painting, and Jennifer Schwartz and Paul Pennella for pretty much everything.

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