Another once-Guided by Voices member making records on his own, Toby has slowly eked out a distinctive style for himself built around his inimitable tenor voice, bittersweet hooks, cheap synthesizers, and the ticking of a drum machine. If you dug the sumptuous popcraft of Sprout's previous longplayers, Carnival Boy and Moonflower Plastic (both on Matador), Wax Nails offers more of the same ilk, albeit stripped down even further (everything is played by Sprout save live drums by Archers of Loaf trapsman Jim Eno on the wonderful, single-ready "Cereal Killer"). Urgent synth workouts "Get Your Calcium" and "How's Your House?" are textbook examples of how good those old boxes can sound in the warm context of a singer/songwriter like Sprout. The stirring "Seed" has an acoustic backdrop, and even comments upon our home state of Indiana ("haze after forty years/old Republicans and deer/Indiana still is harvesting" pretty much sums it up). "The Crawling Backward Man" is effortless jangle, and "In Good Hands" delivers a jaunty sentiment in 3/4 mechanical time. This EP would seem to be a taster for the new full-length Sprout disc to be released on Recordhead later this month.
--Lane Hewitt