Band of Susans

More of interest to completists than in its own right, the album gathers two tracks from the forthcoming album, Veil, while the track "Now Is Now" is a remix of a lesser track from the previous album. While all are solid compositions, none are essential or significantly different from the album cuts. The song "Trash Train" is an unusually up-tempo tune for the quintet, and the instrumental rocks pretty hard but is hardly indispensable. The band does deliver a solid cover of the Stones' "Paint It Black," taunting fans with what the band might have been able to accomplish with material of equal emotional weight. The guitar builds intensity throughout the song, gathering substantial steam, but bassist Susan Stenger's throaty vocals cannot do justice to the song, and the instrumental version suffers from the absence of Jagger's haunting lyrics. ~ Chris Parker, Rovi