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...song EP Please Do Not Disturb reflects a myriad of changes for the singer-songwriter. After eight years on the North Carolina independent label Mammoth (though her last two full-length releases were distributed by industry giant Atlantic), Hatfield has chosen a tiny Hoboken indie, Bar/None Records, to put out her latest material. This release comes at a time of conflict for the artist. Though recording and mixing for her upcoming full-length, God's Foot, has been complete for months, the album is stuck in limbo, caught in a bitter copyright war between Mammoth and Atlantic...
...EP's opening track, the straight-ahead-rocker "Sellout", Hatfield displays more confidence than on her entire previous album, 1995's curiously sedated Only Everything. On that release, attempts to make her music harder often just made it sludgy. Here, the raw pop energy of her older releases is elegantly mixed with urgent, driving power chords and uncharacteristically noisy guitar solos. The song's lyrics provide an ironic commentary on the undernourished sound and sales of Only Everything. "It's not a sellout if nobody buys it/I can't be blamed if nobody likes...
...second album, Otherness, is a return to the drum machines and synthesizers of the Cocteaus' first albums. Yet in tone, the EP is light-years away from those days of bristling desperation. "Feet Like Fins" is the most egregious track in this regard. It sounds a thousand other New Age tracks -- the silvery synthesizer line sticks to three notes, Fraser keeps to a mere two, and the song contains of the same four measures repeated over and over. "Violaine." the one track on the EP with personality, has its sublime moments. In the chorus, Fraser's voice finally breaks through...
Whether that single glimmer of passion is worth trudging through fifteen minutes of auditory rice pudding is debatable. At four tracks each, the cost-benefit ratio of both EPs may be too high for all but the most die-hard obsessives -- who probably already own both of them. Since two songs from each EP are slated to be on the soon-to-be-released full-length album Milk and Kisses, the best bet is probably to wait until then...
...heartbreaking Treasure will likely be disappointed with the upcoming full-length album. Word is that Fraser considers Milk and Kisses a psychic return to the soothing days of her childhood, as hinted at by its uncharacteristically sentimental title. Judging from Fraser's statements and the material on these two EP's, the Cocteaus seem to have succumbed to the disease that terrifies every Prozac-wary auteur -- a thirst for happiness...