“Pepper Spray”
from the EP The Vain, the Modest, and the Dead
2006
MP3 – “Pepper Spray” [right-click/save-as]
The Vain, the Modest, and the Dead is the self-released debut EP from Sammy Tunis and César Alvarez’s South Bronx band The Lisps. Five mostly cute, indie-ish songs that at first appear catchily straightforward, but actually get stranger the more you listen to them, as they aren’t quite how you remember them, the playing just slightly not what you thought it was, and the arrangements disarmingly detailed and off-kilter. The EP’s lead track, “Pepper Spray” is downloadable from the Lisps’ site, but the EP is well worth hearing on top of this for the other tracks, which include a frantic live number “Chaos” that includes the best pocket summary of chaos theory I know of — “That’s just the way snowflakes work/ They’re never exactly the same/ But they’re never anything but snowflakes.”