Give it to me: Please Dept. MP3s

Photo by O.E. Montoya My roommate Jason and I were playing Boggle again. Sheets of torn-out notebook paper surrounded us, full of scratched-out words and little haphazard digits. As per usual, as we pored over the mysterious 4 x 4 cube, I was subjecting him to my stack of promo CDs. After scribbling down the fatal combo of hero, heron, heroin, heroine into a frayed margin, I'd shake my head and skip a track. By the end of the round, I'd remove the failed album and pick up the next jewel case on deck. Then we'd compare words, total the damage and repeat the process all over again. But as we were playing along to Please Dept.'s A Fast One On Julian, Jason cut off his furious scrawl. He stared at the stereo like it'd just suddenly started working and his mouth curled into an eager smile. "This is good!" he commented, still kind of shocked this could've come out of my slush pile. I kept on anagramming up points (arts, tars, star, rats, tsar) but I nodded knowingly, as I'd been looking forward to getting this album for a while. Two games and three songs later, he did it again with an even wider, back-teeth-on-display grin. "No, I mean, this is really good!" he said. I agree in full. I first caught Please Dept. at the Neon Lights show back in February, and everything I loved about them there lives on on record. A Fast One On Julian is an eleven-song beckon to the dance floor (or at least the bar area), replete with shimmer, swagger and charm to spare. It's pop that pops, with spiky electronic peaks, bursts of caffeinated bounce and manic keyboard flourishes. It's fun, casual, cool and instantly likable too, and at an economic twenty-six minutes and change, I'll often turn it on again as soon as it's over. Delivering so much pleasure in a short span, Please Dept. would be ideal for parties, low-key hangouts, summer lazing, hijinks in fast-moving cars and of course, that neverending hunt for elusive eight-letter words and CDs that pay off on their promise. Get A Fast One On Julian for only $4 (and $1 S+H) here. * MP3: "A Big Deposit" - Please Dept. from A Fast One On Julian * MP3: "Sailor's Mouth" - Please Dept. from A Fast One On Julian * MP3: "This Drift Is It" - Please Dept. from A Fast One On Julian * Band MySpace: Please Dept. Tags: Please Dept., Brooklyn, indie pop, A Fast One On Julian, MP3