Skeleton Key have been keeping a low profile these days, and it's only by chance that I found out that they have a new EP out, called "The Lyon's Quintette." (Good luck finding any information about it online, but it can be purchased here.) The band's personnel has been entirely overhauled, with only Erik Sanko remaining from the original lineup, and the emphasis is now more on Sanko and his songs, and less on the clanging, clattering sound that had been their calling card. "Roses," my favorite song from the new EP, starts out with just guitar and voice, Sanko singing a beautiful melody in an unusually frail and emotive voice, then joined by martial snare and trumpet and eventually a painfully distorted guitar, building into something of grandeur and contorted grace.
-- T.B.
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