Seth Smith

The ever-brooding underdog frontman of Dog Day lets us in a little more with this collection of b-sides and demos (and now possibly old problems) from 2006 to 2008. It's a sprawling maze of lowly guitars and his somehow tasteful, melodic vocal flatness merged into 20 tracks on two "sides." It's hard to recognize when one song ends and another begins, and the trail Smith weaves gets increasingly further into exploring relationships, darkness and fuzzy renderings. While the first side has good songs in basic structures close to his band's sound, the second gets experimental, to the point of hearing answering machine recordings played over slow music. It's unclear if the tracks were for Dog Day or solo work originally, but they prove intriguing, putting forth the request for Smith to issue something more official.