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Sep 02, 2010 Web Exclusive By Aaron Passman

You’re strolling through your local independent record store when you stumble upon the latest Telekinesis release. “Oh, cool,” you say to yourself, “a new EP.”

Well, not quite.

Though it’s essentially a holdover until Michael Benjamin Lerner puts out his sophomore LP next year this latest offering is a lot of things, but new isn’t one of them. Barely clocking in at 10 minutes, Parallel Seismic Conspiracies is basically an extended version of the “Dirty Thing” 7-inch, released in April for Record Store Day.

The only thing that’s actually “new” here is a lo-fi cover of Guided By Voice’s “Game of Pricks,” perhaps the most frequently tackled song in the GBV catalog. Beyond that there’s a new version of “Calling All Doctors” from the band’s debut, this time featuring electric guitars and a throbbing bass drum rather than the hesitant piano tinklings of the original.

Rounding out the five-song offering are “Non-Toxic” and a cover of “The Drawback” by proto-Joy Division outfit Warsaw, both of which also showed up on the Dirty Thing 7-inch. They’re both solid tunes—“The Drawback” in particular, if only to hear how well Lerner can bang the shit out of his drum kit—but the whole thing smacks of a money grab. For the miniscule amount of money Lerner and Merge will probably make on this thing they might well have been wiser just to release them as iTunes bonus tracks, rather than package it with the air of legitimacy conferred by a proper EP release (even if it is primarily a digital release). Besides, only two of the tracks here—“Dirty Thing” and “Non-Toxic”-stand out from the rest of the filler.

On the other hand, at least you can get those tracks from that 7-inch on your iPod now. (www.telekinesismusic.com)

Author rating: 5/10