Lost

[y3potential]

I like what I've heard so far. The Lost Room is beautiful. On first impressions I keep expecting Neil to sing Shake and Vac during Skeletons in the Closet. Overall a more pleasing listen than the Agenda EP for me.

[jules]

For me I will fall could have been a new "the way it used to be", with a more housy feeling. It had a fantastic potential.

[Ghost within this house]

Others have spoken about the similarities to other Super-era tracks.

The Lost Room puts me in mind of Transparent.....

[Ghost within this house]

THE LOST ROOM

Sent away to school,
we were taught to march and shoot
and take our discipline in teams.
They trained us to be hard,
for cruelty and manhood
are synonymous, it seems.

And we knew camaraderie
in the Lost Room,
our hideaway,
we would play the strangest games
that any boy might like to play,
In the Lost Room,
both night and day,
candles flickered, casting shadows
on the monsters and their prey.

Mother, I wrote to you,
but your answers only said
that it's important to be brave.
Father was far away
in a corner of the empire
where we never shall be slaves,

For we know camaraderie
in the Lost Room,
a boy could see
how survival of the fittest
meant destruction of the weak,
in the Lost Room,
a tyranny
was imposed by those who crowed
they'd never turn the other cheek

Crash, and then again,
but the servants cleaning dormitories
can't hear what we say.
Crack, it's only pain,
and important to be disciplined
when war is on the way.

They say, we will obey
in the Lost Room,
our hideaway,
we would play the strangest games
that any boy might like to play,
In the Lost Room,
both night and day,
candles flickered, casting shadows
on the monsters and their prey.

In the Lost Room,
a boy could see
how survival of the fittest
meant destruction of the weak,
in the future,
as time would tell,
running riot under orders
would create a living hell.

Lost.

Mother, I'm lost.

Lost.

Mother, I'm lost.

[madsnielsen]

THE LOST ROOM

Sent away to school,
we were taught to march and shoot
and take our discipline in teams.
They trained us to be hard,
for cruelty and manhood
are synonymous, it seems.

...

Thanks

[Stussylad7]

Better than agenda. Really impressed with the quality for demos. Works well as an ep with no dud tracks to skip. Kaputnik took me back to my youth and that was so fxxking long ago! Thanks PSB

[Meebabi]

Well I’ve tried all the links that have been posted on this thread & nothing is working for me. You tube videos are hidden. Spotify only plays Living in the Past.

Edit: I’ve been able to hear the samples. I like what little I’ve been able to hear. Look forward to hearing the rest!

[Steve Fett]

Nah... Agenda was so much better IMO
I like 'Living in the past', 'I will fall' and 'Kaputnik'....but I'm glad I didn't splash out on Annually for this !

[verbow79]

Mediocre filler and not a fan of any of the songs. Have PSB lost their ability to write big pop tunes? Everything since Electric has been meh and mostly forgettable. I’m as big a PSB fan as any, but wish they would go for the gold again like with Very. But also understand they are nearing 70
& train has well left the station.

[domino]

Top:
The Lost Room
I Will Fall
Kaputnik

Meh:
Twenty-Some… eh, sorry, Skeletons in the Closet
Living in the Past

Let’s not forget they are mainly demos from Super and you can hear that. But all in all, I'm quite happy with this EP. It’s "new" material for the fans and that is what it’s about.

[TallThinMan]

I just bought the EP from iTunes UK. A couple of minor observations about that:

• The individual tracks are at the 79p price point, whereas PSB tracks are usually 99p
• Every word in the title “The lost room” is capitalised, which doesn’t match the other tracks where only the first word is capitalised

[Lleonard Pler]

I really like I will fall and it could have been a proper album track with a punchier production.

The lost room, Skeletons and Kaputnik ressemble other soundscapes from the Stuart Price trilogy but they are nice anyway.

A cute EP altogether.

[Lleonard Pler]

I WILL FALL

I will fall
Into your arms
As soon as you call
I'll be straight in a taxi
And head over wherever you are
For I'll recall
The moment I knew
This was once and for all

We'll be together
And I will fall
Into your arms
And I will fall
Into the future

I will melt
Into your arms
Like the last snow of winter
Discovering spring
As soon as you ring
I'll be straight in a taxi
And head over wherever you are
Once and for all

We'll be together
And I will fall
I will fall
Into your arms
And into the future

Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me
I will fall
Come away with me

I will fall
I will fall

[Lleonard Pler]

Mediocre filler and not a fan of any of the songs. Have PSB lost their ability to write big pop tunes? Everything since Electric has been meh and mostly forgettable. I’m as big a PSB fan as any, but wish they would go for the gold again like with Very. But also understand they are nearing 70
& train has well left the station.

Just be grateful for this ride of 40 years of uninterrupted music. It's a miracle that they keep releasing new songs at a steady pace after all this time.

Also they are not hiding it's demo material. In the early days they could find other ways to release demos, now an EP feels more like it. It's kind of a closure to the Stuart Price trilogy. Whatever comes next it'll be new.

As for me, Electric is my favorite PSB album next to Introspective and Nightlife. It keeps impressing me such an effort such late in their career.

[Dog]

Some first thoughts after a few listens.

To point out the obvious these are very obviously demos and this slighter sound defines the release. It’s essentially the rest of Super, Further Listening come early - and their biggest song drop in over three years.

I do wonder why they have chosen to revert to the demo of The Lost Room when they recorded it in full with Price? Maybe they still have plans for that version, or indeed the jazz reworking which was also trailed in Neil’s diaries.

The Lost Room track isn’t the avant-garde work I had imagined but is instead quite beautiful, even if Neil is lyrically presenting something clearly pretty horrific. It’s from his history lecture range of songs and there are a lot of words here crammed into a short song which might have benefitted from a bit more room to breath. Musically there are shades of Always for me here, and lyrically echoes of This must be the place I waited years to leave and The forgotten child, which was also begun around this time.

I will fall is my favourite. There’s an aching here, set against a very eighties sound. The lyrics have a romantic simplicity reminiscent of I want a lover or Liberation and in that way it’s a counterpoint to The Lost Room. It’s from Neil’s range of songs exploring whether love is an active choice or an inevitability - see also Love comes quickly and You choose. I love the very specific use of the word “taxi”. Musically the house piano puts this in Very territory but it would have been a good fit on Hotspot, a complete halfway house between You are the one and Happy people.

Skeletons in the closet is maybe the slightest of the new songs here. As already noted it shares Twenty-something’s cod reggaeton shuffle. The crimes Neil sings about here are non-specific, but if Lost is the mooted Modern Fascism EP I can see the thematic fit. Definitely b-side territory but that’s by no means a dismissal.

Kaputnik is a rush of a track with its clattering drums and I can see the comparisons with Will-o-the-wisp, which is one of my all time favourites. I love the lyrical idea Neil is exploring here - personifying a word which has clearly caught his imagination. This is the track which most obviously speaks to the current moment and was ripe for dusting off: “my tanks will be driving, to park on your lawn”. With a fuller production this could have been huge - I’m thinking a major Integral-style album closer. There aren’t any other groups that could produce a song quite like this.

Living in the past is a good fit here and I like the idea that they’ve added a new track to tie the others together and hammer home their collective relevance to today.

We’ve half an album here to enjoy, even if in demo form, and the tracks reaffirm to me that Super was a particularly purple patch in terms of quality; the era has spawned some exemplary extra tracks which complement the album well. Here are six others from this period which I think pair particularly well with Lost:

The dictator decides
You are the one
Sad robot world
The dead can dance
Wiedersehen
The forgotten child