Stream: Antique Imp “City Boy”

(from Antique Imp’s EP on Broken Glass)

The name Antique Imp conjures up an image of an aging elven creature regaling younglings with tales of times gone by, and this name actually applies to the music—this is a band that carefully thumbs its way through the crate of your most beloved albums and helps you see them as a cohesive whole. Antique Imp explains their own take on your R.E.M. and My Bloody Valentine LPs, telling stories about when they first bought their copy of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy and describing exactly why Syd Barrett is so influential. Their music is comfortably familiar but still illuminating and enjoyable. Their new EP begins with the spare folkish guitar of “Wine And Roses,” winding its way through distorted strings and crooned couplets. “Marmalade” mingles synth strings and classical guitar into a sort of Vini Reilly tone poem, adding ascending vocals that echo and return. “Tribal Presence” lurks behind delayed guitars and soothing and thick distortion that oozes over tom toms and explorations of things existential. “City Boy” rounds out the EP—howling melody and rhythm more blinding than deafening. Those accused of often staring at their shoes will find Antique Imp a fitting soundtrack.

—Eyad Karkoutly