There are serial killers, serial novels, serial poets - and now with the Seedy Gonzales self titled debut EP, a serial record with a little bit of (time) killer, novelist and poet among its five tracks.

The first of a two-part series, Seedy Gonzales embodies a laid-back "downtown" vibe, a literate-but-not-literal look at city life through the eyes of a sad, cheeky poet. It is, to be sure, exactly what you'd expect from "a cranky ex-pat writer from Prague [singer Johnny Riley] who sings like Lou Reed" and "a New York filmmaker who sings like Lou Barlow [singer-guitarist Jason Orans]."

Riley, Orans and drummer Brian Devine met in Los Angeles while they were all working in the film industry. After losing touch for some years, Devine and Orans discovered they had both relocated to NYC. Devine had been playing in Spanish Speaking Psychics with his cousin Jack; Orans and Riley were co-writing songs across the Atlantic since Riley was on his self-imposed exile in the Czech Republic. When Riley came Stateside to visit, Devine dragged his friends into the studio. It was just fun at first. "Next thing we knew," Orans recalls, "we had an album."

They had tracked five tunes: The Stones-meets-Junior Kimbrough number "Just Killin' Time (Before Time Kills Me)," the Reed-ystory-songs "Italian in NY" and "Maddie's Day," the brooding "Kerouac & Burroughs" and "Love's Theosophy" (an adaptation of Percy Shelley's poem "Love's Philosophy"). The Lodge's Emily Lazar (Jeff Buckley, Lou Reed, Clem Snide) mastered the tracks, and the band christened themselves Seedy Gonzales. Orans explains the name: "Cedric Douglass III was the band's first road manager, (back when we were called Up 2 No Good). He died in a tragic accident, and the band continues on in his name as a tribute." That's a lotta hooey ñ but the goofiness and mirth are as much a part of Seedy Gonzales as despair and hash reality. Throughout their joyous, quirky indie pop is a wry sense of humor that tempers the more serious aspects of their writing and achieves the funny-serious balance found in all accomplished art. The characters in these songs resonate, come alive (especially on "Italian in NY," and imagined biography of "The coolest girl ever sitting alone on the subway"). "Many of my favorite songwriters are funny," he says, listing Warren Zevon and Vic Chesnutt. "I don't think there's enough smart humor in music these days, and that's what I like best about the band and what makes us a little different. I'd really love to play to an audience who gets us and laughs and cries at the right parts of the songs, you know?"

Coming soon...

Coming soon...