EP Collection Vol. 1

iTunes Review

Bishop Allen began as the pet project of a pair of Harvard classmates, Justin Rice and Christian Rudder. Their first album, a home-recorded and self-released effort entitled Charm School featured 13 cleverly written, winningly unassuming numbers that borrowed from the hushed, hyper literate aesthetic of Belle and Sebastian and the canny power-pop of independent outfits like The Clean and the Bats. In an effort to broaden their sound and transform their modest bedroom-recording project into a band proper, Rice and Rudder spent 2006 recording and releasing material at the breakneck pace of one EP per month. The resulting recordings far surpassed anything the group had previously released and are collected on this two-volume set, which rivals projects like Stephin Merritt’s 69 Love Songs for its sheer ambition and delightful precocity. Though the group’s musical reference points remain unchanged, tunes like “Bellingham”, “That Same Fire” and “The Light of the Lost” mine the mannered, slightly disheveled pop of groups like the Soft Boys and the Magnetic Fields to far greater effect than anything on Charm School. Volume One of The EP Collection compiles the first seven EPs in the series, though compositions that were eventually re-recorded for the group’s sophomore full length The Broken String are not included on this collection.