Easy Star

John Brown’s Body go for dub on this mostly instrumental EP. Bear in mind that these songs are an approximation of the dub genre instead of actual dubs of their own songs. Throughout the
album, most instruments – drums included – are surrounded by a haze of reverb and delay effects. In “Ring of Berlin,” horns and organs sporadically appear, introducing melodic statements while the bass and drums anchor every rhythmic possibility. The album ends with frontman Elliot Martin singing about the dangers of persecuting the will of the people in the familiar “The Grass.” We come to realize that the EP sounds more like reggae instrumentals than dub, and that the tunes feel like sketches of emerging songs.