By Nicole Villeneuve

Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.

There was a time—a brief, glorious time—in the late nineties and early two thousands when the word “emo” had become somewhat interchangeable with indie and was not yet a default joke about eye-obscuring black hair and all of the awful, angled mirror shots showcasing it. When some of the best of these nu-emo American pop artists (Death Cab for Cutie, anyone?) showed up in Seth Cohen’s bedroom and then a barrage of commercials, the underground found its way up and into the charts, and fans were left with an empty (and very popular and profitable) shell of the worst parts of the genre; shiny young bands riding the re-brand all the way into Hot Topic and weird Livejournal role-playing communities.
Hamilton’s Dark Mean doesn’t seem to have any specific reverence for the heyday of internet indie/emo (instead citing Neil Young, Sigur Ros, and Broken Social Scene as influences, the proof of which certainly rears its head too), but on Frankencottage, their new EP on Vibewrangler, they recall the pained (but far less grating) vocal tones and melodies of Bright Eyes’ best era and back it up with a soft, familiar drum machine not unlike Ben Gibbard’s little side project that could, the Postal Service. Plied dreamily with pianos, sparse, warm guitars (that, when they do appear, are so perfectly placed and executed it’s literally exciting), glockenspiel, and modernizing alt-country banjos, Frankencottage peaks in a classic gang-vocal shout-along on the slow, slightly melancholic and Brand New–esque “Lullaby.”
It’s a shame the closing track shows almost none of the composed, subdued energy as the rest of the EP; its meandering is not unlikable (and in fact recalls similar quieter moments from the Weakerthans), but would be better suited closing a full-length as opposed to too quickly winding down an otherwise consistently promising, albeit short, collection. While you needn’t be clutching a dusty Get Up Kids album to enjoy Frankencottage, those of us that are will find an extra bit of intrigue in the reminiscent sounds (and we should all be best friends). The EP is being offered in exchange for your email address at the band’s website.