Equals Equals

It's not often that a band comes along with an original idea, even when it's just putting together two already existing sounds that hadn't been combined before, so Texan act Equals' marrying of the chiming guitars and (to an extent) epic scope of the post-rock of Explosions in the Sky or latter-day Mogwai with the intricate yet danceable rhythms of the likes of Foals is genuinely quite a striking thing. Getting off to a bold start with the guitar bursts and increasingly complicated interweaving melodies of False Light, the band's self-titled debut EP features a fair amount of spine-chilling moments thanks to some interesting ideas and instrumentation, such as Salvo's mixing the forcefulness of Battles' (and by extension Three Trapped Tigers) style with delicate acoustic guitar and banjo.

However, it's elsewhere in the anatomy that Equals' problems lie - for starters, their attempts on some tracks to create multi-part epics in a relatively truncated running time mean things can get a bit rushed, with the connective tissue that links the various parts not entirely convincing (in places, such as the second half of False Light, its pretty much non-existent, with the band instead lurching from one dramatic but disconnected section to the next). It could also be said that the EP rather lacks teeth. Presumably because Equals are so intent on not being described as just another derivative post-rock lot they seem to be holding back on the volume, rendering their material rather more polite than it should be (in particular on the country-lite sketch of Roadside or the jazzy Electric Blanket, which is almost as cosy as its ridiculous title). But if they get over the fear to occasionally flirt with cliché - after all, there's a good reason why the quiet-loud-quiet-loud structure came to be a defining post-rock staple - then they could be magnificent.