For some reason the name of this project threw me for a loop. As soon as I read meenk, I thought it was going to be a weird experi-metal band that fused the gutpunching guitars of Megadeth with the free-form jazz of David Sanborn. No idea why. Luckily it isn’t that at all. Rather it’s a singer/songwriter project that sounds more like one of The Donnas solo projects, or if Courtney Barnett wrote better songs. It’s only four tracks, and I ended up enjoying them all quite a bit.

Scama Scau feels much like a bedroom recording, small and intimate enough you might think that it’s being performed right in front of you. Give it a second listen, and a third, and you discover there’s usually a lot more going on than you think. Meenk’s songs figure out the basics of the tune pretty easily, and then build on it to create a compelling soundscape. The songs draw heavily from Rilo Kiley and Liz Phair, and when you’re picking your inspiration you can do a lot worse than that.

The single off the EP, “19,” is the best song available. It’s almost the most representative as it puts on display all of the best qualities about Meenk. Especially the conversational way the lyrics are written and delivered in a talk/sung hybrid.