Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Eat Sugar is a Cincinnati - based quartet --- vocals, bass, synth, and drums --- that is hard to get a handle on, even as you want to, very badly. Their self-titled, four song, EP brings to mind a bunch of different bands, all of them very, very good --- the smart hipness of XTC and Sparks and Talking Heads and Pere Ubu, the unabashed energy of a bunch of different punk bands, and the informed soul of fellow Seven Hills rock-soulsters Afghan Whigs --- without sounding exactly like any one of them.

The EP format works very well for Eat Sugar. They cram so much energy into each composition that even though the entire project clocks in at around twelve minutes it’s an extremely intense twelve minutes. My favorite track on Eat Sugar might well be Brown Boots, the longest track as well, but the lyrics to Sixteen are so delightfully perverse (I think) that I keep listening to it over and over instead. All four tracks, however, are great, and even if you aren’t a fan, particularly, of any of the bands I mentioned above you should give Eat Sugar a couple of chances from beginning to end and all the way through. It’s like a drug. The songs are primarily bass-driven, and if mosh pits still exist (I don’t get out much) I can’t imagine Eat Sugar doing a show without at least a body or two being carried off the floor as a result of being pummeled to the beat of the low notes.

Eat Sugar is attracting a British fan base as well --- the internet is a wonderful thing, is it not? --- and I can see them going over in a huge way in Europe, particularly in Britain and Germany. Catch them here, and now, while you still can. Highly recommended.