Remember these guys? Following Salem's conversation-starting debut album, last year's King Night, they embarked on a headlining U.S. tour; counted Courtney Love and Liv Tyler as celebrity hangers-on/onlookers (respectively); posed for some stylish pictures that revealed band member Heather Marlatt's pregnancy; made a meaningless video for King Night's title track with Jann Wenner's son Theo; offered a horrible Britney Spears remix; and gave a performance at this year's Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona that made their infamous 2010 SXSW appearance sound like Live Rust by comparison.
But whatever you think of King Night, the album is still the definitive version of the often imitated sound that Salem brought on the scene. The proper full-length follow-up to King Night is due some time in 2012, and there have been rumors that Salem are pursuing a different direction for the record; the band's latest EP, I'm Still in the Night, carries no indication that they're trying to branch out.
True to its title, the four-track EP mostly feels like a collection of songs that didn't make the LP's cut. I'm Still in the Night is more polished in terms of production, from the clipped howls that open the EP to the acid-rain synths of "Baby Ratta", and it includes a seven-minute cover of electronic pop collective Alice DeeJay's immortal 1998 trance anthem "Better Off Alone". The cover doesn't come close to matching the original (what does?), but there's something perversely appealing about Salem draping a simplistic "why won't you give your love to me" anthem in their own dingy, smirking, loner outlook. Mercifully, Salem forgo Jack Donoghue's mush-mouthed rapping until I'm Still in the Night's closing track, "Krawl", which finds him rambling about Slurpees, global warming, and how "your bitch, she could suck a dick for me." True to form, it's repugnant on any number of levels.
So, loud synths, eye-roll-inducing rapping, and more clattering drum machines than you'd find on a footwork compilation-- yes, I'm Still in the Night is more of the same. If you follow along enough to check it out, it offers a predictable mix of what they do well and where they go wrong, but it's also easy to ignore. Which, for a band that thrives on controversy, is a sign of trouble.
