(Self-released, digital)
Variety packs can be a gamble. Sure, free will is in your hands as you pick between Doritos, Cheetos or Ruffles, the true dream of a 21st-century libertine. Why just eat vanilla ice cream when you can have chocolate, too? Well, there’s also strawberry in there — are you going to be that person that leaves a container of Neapolitan with one pink slab of freezer-burned ice cream?
This is the peril of living your truth, my friends: the true tyranny of choice. Burlington quintet LACES are your musical equivalent of a microbrew sampler, a band whose self-titled debut offers listeners what amounts to five different bands fronted by five different songwriters on five different tracks. (The food editors might flag this review, but it’s too late to turn back now.)
A pentad of multi-instrumentalists and songwriters, LACES might be the Queen City’s answer to Broken Social Scene, the Canadian collective of indie rockers that flourished in the early 2000s. LACES are likewise a study in combining powers to become something greater.
Consisting of Levi Keszey, Abagael Giles, Christopher McManus, Erik Sievert and Seamus Hannan, LACES formed as a COVID-era basement pod of musicians in 2020. The band takes an interesting approach on its debut. As opposed to melding its disparate sounds or trying to create a kind of musical melting pot, each member takes center stage for a song.
Opening track “Beeswax Candle” was written by Levi Keszey, who also plays with indie-rock outfit the Pyros. A jangly, Pavement-esque rocker, it kicks off the EP with an insouciant kind of cool, a rave-up that keeps itself under control, complete with some nice stabs of horns.
“Summer Rain” veers into another lane with whiplash quickness, as indie rock gives way to a gentle, soulful ballad written and sung by Giles, a climate and environment reporter with Vermont Public by day. While the sonic characteristics of the previous track remain, they morph to meet Giles’ clear, harmonious vocals.
McManus, formerly of the alt-country outfit Great Western, takes the reins for “Pop Top Chevy.” The band adopts a country-adjacent twang but, crucially, without overdoing it or leaning into cliché. LACES don’t lather the track in pedal steel or go for big Nashville harmonies; instead, the Americana-ish tune turns into a big indie-rock breakdown, complete with a swaggering guitar solo and (that’s right) more horns. It’s a horny album, OK?
Written and sung by Sievert, “Morning Light” marks perhaps the EP’s biggest shift as LACES ride a funky, Afrobeat-inspired rhythm over the slinky, darkly danceable song. The record closes with Hannan’s “Bloodshot Eye.” The Larkspurs percussionist’s entry is a slacker-rock coda, complete with banjo and a guitar solo that would be at home on Meat Puppets’ Too High to Die.
The danger of tossing all of those ingredients into the pot is producing an unappetizing mélange, and the incongruity of LACES EP does give its sequencing an uneven flow: As soon as you get into a groove, the band pulls you into another zone. Some folks might find the record’s variety to be an obstacle and check out whenever they hit a flavor they don’t care for, leaving that freezer-burned stripe of strawberry ice cream to languish. Me? I don’t leave perfectly good ice cream untouched, and the same goes for LACES EP.
LACES EP is available at lacesvt.bandcamp.com and major streaming services.
LACES EP by LACESThis article appears in January 21 • 2026.
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