Richard Swift is a gifted musician and producer (Damien Jurado, Mynabirds) with a deep and complex affinity for "pop" in all its shadings. Why he's not on the radio next to Adele, Bruno Mars, or The Shins (with whom he's been playing in recent years) is a mystery. On Walt Wolfman, Swift continues melding vintage sounds—here it's mostly '60s R&B and Phil Spector-ized pop—with contemporary, reverb-drenched indie rock. The EP shares much with 2008's Ground Trouble Jaw EP. Swift's evocative falsetto sometimes quivers with a delicate and tentative shyness; at other times it heats up the room with desire-fueled R&B. His vocals are woolly and buried, indie-style, in the Motown-ish "Laugh It Up," and yet the tune's hook demands you sing along in your own woolly warble. "Out and About" and "Drakula" reek of garage psychedelia, and "Zombie Boogie" feels like Ty Segall at the end of a bender. "Whitman"—one of the cleanest tracks—sways and swoons with warm toms, tambourines, and interludes of surly guitar, while "Mg 333" is a sensual hybrid of opiated '60s cool and hipster R&B.

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