The Loop : The Long Winters - Ultimatum EP

The Long Winters - Ultimatum EP (2005)

This is one of many albums I can thank The Blaze 1260AM for introducing me to. I spent many many hours up in that studio and thanks to a rotating staff of music directors, piles of CD submissions and the cutting-edge nature of college radio in general, there was a constant flow of new tunes.

I played "The Commander Thinks Aloud" several times as part of my rotation shift and after hearing a few recommendations from some of my favorite musicians, I decided to pick up the album. It was only 6 songs long, and for the first few listens I mostly circled back to "Commander". What an exceptional song, seriously.

It wasn't until a few treks across campus that something clicked with me and the song "Ultimatum". I woke up one morning feeling rather infinite, oddly enough since it was one of my longer days on campus. I was starting to fall for a boy pretty hard and everything just seemed beautiful. Somehow while the music served as background during my bus ride, the line "My arms miss you, my hands miss you. The stars sing, I've got their song in my head!"caught my attention. I circled back to the song a couple times, then, for one of the only times I remember, I put it on a one-song-shuffle. I spent the entire rest of the day listening to that song, easily several dozen times. I told everyone I ran into that they needed to hear it.

The cool thing about this EP is that it also features a live acoustic version of "Ultimatum", with a very sincere opening of "I'm gonna play this with the soft parts of my fingers . . . " Everything about this music just felt eloquent. The other tracks were just as beautiful, including another live acoustic version of an older song off their When I Pretend to Fall record called "Bride and Bridle". I got chills when I heard "Your father bet 10 years against this day, he wed his girl to a better man, and he stands there now with his hat in his hands". Beautiful. The full band versions of "Everything is Talking" and "Delicate Hands" not only better represent the band as a whole, but sound amazing sandwiched between these acoustic tracks.

This is a good winter-time album, or a good any-time album. And proof that Barsuck may have the best roster EVER.

Please ignore the blatent FYE advertisment