Among the most féted of the younger generation of prog bands, The Pineapple Thief continue to display their intricate ability on this EP.
The centrepiece is a lengthy track called To Live And Die To Familiar Sound Of… which, for ease of listening, has been divided into four parts. And it’s here that The Pineapple Thief are at their finest, with a maturity that continues to take them into musical territory that can be almost brutal yet somewhat soothing.
The musicianship is often breathtaking, but this is one band who refuse to allow a prodigious ability to improvise to overshadow the core song.
The rest of this EP has the distince feel of filler material: there’s a single edit of Show A Little Love itself, plus acoustic versions of two songs and a remix of another from the band’s last album. Maybe they lacked confidence in the 16-minute suite. A shame, because that’s all we needed.