Gengahr took us all by surprise and dropped a new EP earlier this week: Tired Eyes proceeds a deluxe version of their début album A Dream Outside, which came out on 30^th of September with four additional tracks. Both coincide with a UK tour that begins here in Brighton next week – of course we’ll be there to catch the action. Tired Eyes seems to be a digital only release but perhaps the band will have some physical copies for the merch stand on tour – we recently heard that record sales at live gigs is now going to be counted towards the charts, so maybe we’ll be seeing more of this over the next few years!

This three track EP is a perfect companion to the album as it comprises tracks that were recorded in those initial sessions and, for whatever reason, were not chosen to be included on the original album release (although ‘Fade To Black’ and ‘Loki’ will be on this new deluxe version). The title track ‘Tired Eyes’ has been a live favourite for some time, so it probably came as a bit of a surprise that it wasn’t included on the album. On this track the band enlisted producer/mixer Nicholas Vernhes (Deerhunter, The War On Drugs, Animal Collective) to help them finish the job, so one suspects there were some tweaks necessary to do the song justice and there wasn’t time to do that work during their hasty album sessions. Also perhaps this is a hint at who the band could be working with on their follow up as their seems to be real mutual respect between the band and Vernhes, as they have talked about being fans of the records he’s worked on.

In truth I can’t hear a huge amount of difference between ‘Tired Eyes’ and the other two tracks, ‘Loki’ and ‘Fade To Black’ – the bass tone is a bit richer, the vocal a bit more present and Felix’s guitar is given a bit more room than before. For me ‘Loki’ is the biggest surprise not to have made it onto the first album, there’s a lovely amount of space to the intro section, full of atmosphere, and lovely shifts of groove between chorus and verse… of course, this being Gengahr the chorus is as catchy as hell. Ultimately though all three songs are of a similar quality and close in sound to the album itself, but that isn’t a criticism. The worry with releasing an EP of leftovers would be that you’d be getting the watered down dregs of their material, but that’s definitely not the case here, all three songs would have sounded perfectly at home on A Dream Outside, so I’ll be looking forward to hearing one or two of them at the live show next week. This is just enough new Gengahr to tide us over for the next few months and everyone loves a surprise, let’s hope they’re still writing material this strong for the follow up and that we won’t have to wait too long for their second album.
Adam Kidd

Website: gengahr.com
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