Do you have a friend who always gets lost driving you home late night after a show, but you love the meandering, mystical conversation as she scatters further and further away from your abode? That's the feel of this introduction to The Color Bars.

Having played shows with everyone from Brian Jonestown Massacre to 50 Foot Wave to our own the Long Winters, The Color Bars live here in Seattle now, and are threatening to play out locally at least once every four weeks. NYC must be missing their reportedly fun shows terribly, since their kiss-off at the Mercury Lounge several months ago.

This eight song but goes-by-in-a-lick EP continually twists and turns through delightful distractions with an adorable lack of self-consciousness, and is a good introduction to the endlessly shifting pleasures offered by Gerald Slevin, John English, and David Spelber — who all go giddy, marching with instruments like "Rhodes," alto and tenor saxes, xylophone, maracas, "cigarette pack," trumpet, "Goblin laugh," along with the usual slackin' bass, drums, and guitars, through room-songs of post-apocalypse Georgia O'Keefe-gospel (the sun-slackin' "All Your Kitchen Ghosts"), Steppenwolf-meets-Beach Boys-meets-New Wave ("She Disarmed Me"), candy-riffed 60s trip-pop ("We're A Tag Team"), and ending up on the back porch of the surf-music-for-a-painted-desert "Greetings from Dubai."

If that sounds unpredictably whimsical, it is, and I have the feeling that more time playing and recording since this disc was released will make them a lot of fun to see live, and worth checking out what they record next.