Jamaica Plain

Kurt Vile and the Violators are wrapping up a career year after the success of their great new LP, Wakin' on a Pretty Daze, and no career year can be complete without some sober reflection on that career's earlier, uncertain days.

This 10" is Jamaica Plain, a collaboration with Sore Eros (the band of sometime Vile collaborator Robert Robinson) named after the Boston neighborhood in which it was recorded roughly a decade ago.

Though it spans just 16 minutes between three songs, Jamaica Plain is a must-hear for Violators fans interested in a musical snapshot of the band's early stages.

The predominantly instrumental EP moves with graceful efficiency and richness, somewhat similar to Do Make Say Think's & Yet & Yet, another early-aughts album from a collective known for soft, detail-attentive space-outs with a lot of guitar. Though it's all too fuzzy to be "unmistakably Violators", it reveals that the talented ears behind it could gaze with the best of them even then.