Data Romance -- Data Romance

8/10

It's hard to write much of a review for just four songs...how about I TELL A STORY.
Last summer, my wife and son and I were vacationing in Perdido Key, Florida.  We hadn't been on a family vacation in four years, and it was a pretty sweet trip.  Every night, my wife and I got out the laptop, surfed to teennick.com, and caught up on Degrassi: The Next Generation.  I used to love Degrassi, and I even expressed my love here, but my goodness has it gone off the rails into a realm that no longer resembles anything like reality lately.  Anyway, this one episode had a dramatic moment featuring a song that I thought was really cool.  Degrassi actually tells you what songs it has played at the end of every episode, and this one was "Bullets," by a Canadian duo (Degrassi is a Canadian show, after all), Data Romance.
My wife looked at me during the Degrassi episode and said, "You like this music, don't you?"  She was correct.  I'm a sucker for un-orthodox electronic music and dreamy female vocals.  I immediately downloaded Data Romance's just released self-titled EP debut.
While only four songs long, the Data Romance EP feels like a complete experience.  The vocalist sounds like emotion spilling out of a cup, washing over the table, and spilling onto the floor.  The cold, sometimes distant and mechanized tones of the music are a great counterbalance to her singing style (Get it? Data and Romance?).  The vocalist sings about keeping herself in a relationship on "The Deep," fighting for possibly the same guy she felt was threatening her freedom on "Arms," romantic confusion on "Bullets," and the fallout from everything on "Streetlight." All four tracks are equally different, but they interlock to form a pretty definite beginning, middle, and end.  Few acts can pull this off in four songs.  I'm impressed, and I want a full length, now.

Also, they just released a free covers EP, and it is sweet.

2011 Self-Released
1. The Deep 3:32
2. Arms 4:33
3. Bullets 4:21
4. Streetlight 5:20