Apparently on a song-writing tear, Luna reappears with a new, nearly full-length EP mere months after their last album, Romantica. At this point, no one's going to accuse Luna of being innovative - and no one really should expect them to do so. Change for Luna comes incrementally, not dramatically - and either you like what Luna does, in which case you'll find several tracks here worthy - or you don't, in which case there's nothing new here to convert you. Consistency, however, is a virtue, and four four tracks here are as good as or better than anything on Romantica, while the remainder are strictly b-side material. (Retail copies apparently feature videos for two tracks from Romantica; my advance copy lacks them.) Beginning with a peppier tempo than the band has assayed in quite a while, opening track "Astronaut" features a chorus that almost sounds like New Order circa Brotherhood - not an act I would have previously associated with Luna. Again, Luna's deviations from their typical midtempo don't find them suddenly channeling Land Speed Record-era Husker Du, but sure enough if this track isn't nearly their speediest ever. "Alibi" is the best track on the EP - it's based on one of those simple but effective tricks whereby the song moves to a distant suspended chord and, following after a swooping bassline, resolves itself back to that first chord. Guitarist Sean Eden's sliding sinuously from chord to chord reinforces this effect. Add a clattering, slap-echoed lead motif between verses...and that's all I need, anyway. "New Haven Comet" is an almost jazzy waltz, buoyed by a syncopated acoustic rhythm guitar. Dean Wareham applies a canyonesque reverb on an almost steel-guitar -like tone, making a few cameos over the chorus before flowering in a lengthy solo intertwined with lovely high-tone noodling from bassist Britta Phillips. And finally, one of two covers on the EP (the cover of the Stones' "Waiting on a Friend" is pointless), Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" shows that Dean Wareham seems interested in following Lou Reed not only in the obvious Velvetisms that have characterized his entire career (both with Luna and with Galaxie 500) but in his interest in guitar tones for their own sake. "Neon Lights" stakes a bell-toned lead against a sandpapered rhythm sound first heard in muted chukka-chukka harmonics on the verses and then pouring forth in distorted glory on the choruses. The song's lengthy fade eschews soloing for some distant vocal harmonies, guitar squalls, and genre-apt clickety-clack single-note guitar rhythm. Of the remaining tracks, "Teenage Lightning" is pretty much Luna-by-numbers: slow midtempo, Wareham's tossed-off nonsense lyrics ("I've got pills that make me cranky...I can hypnotize a pancake"), made only moderately interesting by the curious instrumental blend highlighted near the end: countryish pedal steel, a harpsichord-like electric keyboard, an autoharp, and twiddly bass interjections. "Drunken Whistler" is a shortish instrumental that reminds me a bit of the Velvet Underground's "Ride into the Sun" - in that just like the Another View version of the Velvets track, this song sounds incomplete without lyrics. It's a minor ear-perk to hear Britta Phillips apparently channeling Wareham's Galaxie 500 bass sparring partner Naomi Yang in her high-register explorations...but again, strictly b-side material. It is encouraging that a band that put out a strong album in April of last year could emerge only half a year later (Close Cover Before Striking was released in October) with at least four songs of equal or higher quality. And even the weaker tracks here are at least partially redeemed by thoughtful arranging and playing. Luna looks to be on a winning streak.