On last year's self-titled sophomore release Vulture Whale II (QRO review), the Birmingham, Alabama band managed to show up both the alt-country & party-rock scenes, two of the biggest these days in indie music, with a fun, catchy, twang-y release.  For the six-song Bamboo You EP, Vulture Whale venture into a kind of irony-pop, peppered not just with twang but also seventies brat vocals from singer/frontman Wes McDonald.  It's not as extremely winning as the backcountry party of II, but still an enjoyable excursion EP.

"Greatest Night" kicks off Bamboo with a kind of garage-irony, like Elvis Costello (QRO album review) - or someone making fun of Elvis Costello.  The irony-pop-twang of "Let's Get On With It, Then" follows, but it's McDonald's seventies brat voice which starts to come out clearest on "The Pipe" and "Plam! I Love"; the former is some seventies proto-punk garage-rock, the latter a sweet brat love song.  The guitars come back to the fore with "Amerikerr", thanks to the up-down garage, but it is closer "I'm Sorry" that is the real outlier, as it's actually sad, not ironic (though still swings).

Vulture Whale II was such an enjoyable find that it would have been hard to replicate.  Indeed, the one knock was that the band would need to grow from there.  So while we wait for (presumably titled) Vulture Whale III, the band fully explores one of the avenues they've tried driving down in Bamboo You.  And if they can take what they've learned from the EP and build on what they did on the LP, the sky's the limit.

MP3 Stream: "Greatest Night"