Careful! [Limited Edition Smog LP]

Limited Loser Edition on smog vinyl. You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds. "It's pop music, basically." On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing it's limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines of Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. As McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! Is about looking out for one another."