In Rotation: Seasonal Men's Wear - 9xTOx5xCORE

Sometimes, more and more often in fact as the years go on, I'm heading out to shows directly from work. I'll send e-mails, search records, download documents, answer the phone, update web pages, eat a sandwich, print out forms, smile politely, set up displays, evangelize the F5 key, send more e-mails and get in the car. I then shoot down the road to a bar, a basement, a garage or a park to hear the band of the moment. It gives me some satisfaction to sweat through the same clothes I just did research in mere hours beforehand.

I think this qualifies as 9xTOx5xCORE.

Seasonal Men's Wear had a self-titled EP out last year, but 9xTOx5xCORE is like a self-titled release in spirit. If you can imagine, the band's spirit animal would surely be Sasquatch wearing a striped tie and glasses. That makes 9xTOx5xCORE a spirit-titled EP. "Higher Learning, Stomach Churning" chronicles the innate fear of hard work being rendered pointless. "Conversations in The Kitchen" opens the EP with a quintessential Seasonal Men's Wear guitar lead. The EP closes with a re-recording of the long-running SMW theme song, "Theme Song For a Quarter-Life Crisis." The song, lyrically, is a natural fit for this release. It also benefits from the re-recording as the sound quality on this EP is the sharpest in the band's catalog to date.

Stream 9xTOx5xCORE below or head to Seasonal Men's Wear's bandcamp page for a download or to order it on cassette (choose lemon, cherry, lime or washed up blueberry!)