Longwave, which released the excellent Strangest Things LP last year (it ended up being #26 on my list last year, so it unfortunately did not make the top 25) have surprisingly released Life of the Party, and EP of five completely new tracks. What's an even bigger surprise is that only one of the tracks "Here it Comes" is produced by Dave Fridmann who produced Strangest Things. The other four tracks are produced by the band themselves, which has resulted in mixed results. "We're Not Gonna Crack" is a hard nosed rocker that kicks major ass, and is definitely the hardest rock song Longwave have put out so far (think Phantom Planet from earlier this year). The other songs are good, including the instrumental "Sunday Night Health" but what starts to grate the nerves is the fact that every song has distorted vocals. It's almost like they didn't have faith in Steve Schlitz's voice to cover the songs. Hopefully by the time their next full length comes out, they'll have worked out their vocal issues.