The one thing you can expect from melancholic, too-smart-for-his-own-good singer-songwriter Dan Bejar is that he’s going to do what you do not expect. Folks were looking forward to more masterful indie rock on 2004's Your Blues, so they got arty synth-pop instead. On this EP, recorded with touring band (and fellow Vancouverites) Frog Eyes, Bejar revisits half the tunes on Blues. The entire exercise itself is a tad strange, but we’d ask nothing else from Bejar. These newer versions are rougher (recorded in one weekend) and, for the most part, better. "Notorious Lightning" gets a dirgey workout; taken from six to ten minutes, the full epic-osity-ness of the song shines through. Where "The Music Lovers" sounded like a New Wave perfume commercial before, here it resembles a drunken collaboration between the Hedwig band and a Street Legal Bob Dylan. In the end, it’s his most accessible release since 2002’s This Night. - Mike McGonigal