EP Review: The Third Door

Almost any band with “collective” in their name suggests a fluidity of membership, and the Jason McIver Collective is no exception. After forming and releasing their first EP The Big Blue (2014) and the album I May No Perf (2016) (each had a different lineup), McIvor took some time out and has now regrouped for a second EP The Third Door. This time the work is almost exclusively a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Allister Meffan, whose work with Alae was nominated for best independent release for the Taite Music Prize in 2016. Original McIver collectivist bass man John Curtis makes an appearance on one of these new tracks, but otherwise this is a collaboration of just McIvor and Meffan, with the pair co-writing all the songs, producing, co-producing and Meffan mixing the final result.

And a fine result comes from this new collaboration. The opener Old Strangers is a low tempo, part acoustic, part desert slide electric guitar piece, dry, hot and vast like some southwestern American widescreen cinema soundscape. “I’ll pretend I know what’s wrong / Like I know where you’ll come back from” McIvor sings on the chorus as he yearns for the return of a lost lover. It’s almost as if he is literally staring out across the desert and buttes looking for that far-off dust plume of a vehicle approaching.

This is so tastefully done I listened on repeat over and over, reminding me of those other southwest desert stylists Calexico and their songs of dry landscapes, borderlands, dust and loss.

It’s a great opener and sets a tone for the rest of the EP. There are more guitar slides, very tastefully pitter-pattered drums, even more tastefully done trumpet, layered vocals and spacious reverb that gives the whole recording a sense of these wide-open landscapes.  On So Into Myself the narrator ditches the sense of loss for some self-confidence and satisfaction with what he’s got – not that he comes as overly convinced. “Sometimes I just want to run away / But anyway it seems I’m here to stay / It’s easier to think that way / Just think of myself / And then everything feels better / Sick of changing like the weather.”  I wondered whether the lost lover whose return he yearned on Old Strangers isn’t so perfect after all. Not that it really matters perhaps, for by the final track Who Was I? McIvor’s narrator is back up to his neck in self-doubt, pain and inability to forget, again sounding like he is stuck on a rusty ranch with hungry cattle and a dead car. This final track brings about a true return to the cinematic soundscape of the opener, and the EP is all the more satisfying for it.

It’s too bad the Collective limited this release to five songs. There’s more to come from this collaboration, I hope, and also I hope an opportunity to see them play these songs live. A bigger band would undoubtedly be needed to reproduce what’s here on this EP, but stripped down and in the right venue these songs could be even more weighty and tasteful and yearning. The Third Door is a great piece of work that is worth repeat listens, and one which I hope leads to more of this – delicious and shimmering like the desert sky at high noon.