Grade: B

Key Track: “If And When I Die”

Nine-member band The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die aren’t exactly known for palpable, conventional music. You can probably tell by staring at their eighteen syllable name. Their mix of emo, ambiance, twee-pop and dissonance has, for a few years now, brought a fresh voice to a scene dominated largely by straight pop-punk. Their new EP, recorded alongside spoken word artist Chris Zizzamia, is even more confoundingly complex and headache-y than their previous works.

The band, who I’m going to shorten to The World Is to avoid carpal tunnel (no offense!), brought on Zizzamia to bring a form of intense narration to their ambient music. They knew it would polarize fans – only the people truly onboard with them would appreciate it, because it is tough to swallow. Zizzamia spits some beautiful poetry throughout the EP, about human bodies making up stars, intertwining, and facing invincibility, all capping off with the beautiful line “I think my name is safest in your mouth” in the finale, “Autotonsorialist.” Another great line, “I like you like I like the dark/Why would I aim to defeat it?” peppers the track “Shoppers Beef.” Zizzamia is an interesting addition to the band – it isn’t just that spoken word works well alongside the band’s music, it’s that his spoken word works well. His flowing poetry, moving through anger, hope and experiment, is told with a spitting clarity and a scathing touch. It’s a strange fit, but that’s kind of the band’s MO, after all.

The band takes pages out of every section of their own playbook on “Broken Bodies.” Through the eight tracks, there’s a long, experimental opening, build-ups to climaxes that don’t happen, a conventional song (“$100 Tip”) that fades out into a multi-minute drum segment, and a track with a full, driving beat (“Space Explorations to Solve Earthly Crises”). They hit all their own notes. There are actual vocals throughout the album, in a few tracks. Some are just Zizzamia, some are both, and occasionally we get them simultaneously.

The fault in the EP’s experimentation is that it doesn’t have quite the same cohesiveness that their full-length, “Whenever, If Ever,” had. The EP flows, but each song is it’s own distinct being, where the tracks on their album all need each other to work. Still, spoken word alongside experimental emo makes for a very unique listen, like a sadder version of the Moody Blues’ “Knights in White Satin.” The World Is have already proven themselves to be one of the strangest, most difficult and original bands we have today, and “Broken Bodies” just extends this. This would probably never work for a full album, but it’s a consistent and consistently ambitious work, one that takes a few listens and aims for both the heart and the head.

Give them yr money and download it here.

If you like this, try: I don’t know, Pink Floyd? drugs?

-By Andrew McNally