Ee - For 100 We Try Harder
(Asian Man)
As the rapidly changing lineup attests, Seam was always about Sooyoung Park. Everyone else did what Sooyoung told them to do. Sooyoung Park's new band Ee seems more of a collaboration, teaming him with Tobin Mori of Korea Girl and two other dudes I never heard of before. Mori perhaps even takes more of a lead role in the band than Sooyoung as he formed the band and is the lead singer. Whether the collaborative nature of the band helps or hurts Ee is up to debate. The band's rhythm section seems better suited to uptempo pop/punk than Sooyoung's patient rock. In some songs, it seems to draw Sooyoung's guitar playing out of its shell in ways he's never explored before, like the infectious "Beijing." However, other songs are pretty much ruined by the lack of cohesion, like how the bass is insistent on following its own path on "San Jose" no matter what the guitar does, going completely against the grain. In the end though, Park and Mori's great guitar playing shines through, and the bass and drums complement the guitars well, even if they never really match closely. While towards the end of Seam's run, the songs perhaps started sounding the same, creating the slowcore framework of changes in volume, Park's songwriting is freshened up by being cast as more pure indie rock and pop, focusing more on pop hooks and pure riffs. However, the tried and true slowcore songs, like the great "Yellow Taraval," still work. For Seam fans, Ee is definitely worth the $8 postpaid asking price.
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