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After a 17-year hiatus, Mazzy Star returned with the release of 2013’s Seasons of Your Day. The well-received album showed fans that unlike some new releases from artists whose heyday was in the eighties and nineties, Mazzy Star have stayed true to their sound without succumbing to modern influences. For the past five years Hope Sandoval has resurrected her side project, Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, as well as contributing to songs by Psychic Ills (“I Don’t Mind”) and Massive Attack (“The Spoil”). In anticipation of both their first gig in five years and also their first shows ever in Australia this June, Mazzy Star is back with a new 4-song EP Still.
The EP opens with nothing but a piano and Sandoval’s immediately recognizable ethereal croon. After a minute the signature Mazzy Star slide guitar joins in to make “Quiet, The Winter Harbour” as fine a tune as anything that Hope Sandoval and guitarist David Roback have previously released. “That Way Again” plays out a bit more folky with tight, arpeggio guitar riffs being plucked over a more rhythmically strummed acoustic. The title track is the last new song of the album and also the shortest. Clocking in at just about two minutes, it finds Sandoval’s lyrics in a more spoken word style as a droning noise sounds behind an acoustic guitar that brings to mind the English rock band South. The final track of the EP is a new version of the title track from 1993’s So Tonight That I Might See. This new “Ascension Version” is just as psychedelic at the original but relies on a droning organ instead of an electric guitar.
Though there is no word on any additional tour dates outside the already announced Sydney dates, we can hope that these new songs will spur a more extensive tour later this year. Considering that Mazzy Star has been able to stay true to their roots, any live performance of their new material will be just as enjoyable as the old.
