Afternoon Sister’s debut behaves with that kind of courtesy. A crashed browser offers a small mercy. Restore previous session. The tabs come back in the order you left them, half loaded, none of them new. Reset E.P. is five songs long, and each one asks for a clean start. The room on the other side of the button is the same room.
Afternoon Sister are a small indie rock band from Boise, Idaho, and this is their first release, out on North Corona Records. The press note places 14-year-old singer and songwriter Alice Esquibel at the front of the band. On the release itself, the music is credited to Alice Ventura. Ray Hedgpeth engineered, produced, mixed and mastered the record at M51, with sessions also at Cumulus. Joby Harris made the artwork. The announcement names Neil Young, Chromatics, Mazzy Star and Air as reference points. Those names sketch a taste. What the EP actually does is narrower. Across about twenty-three minutes it moves from a saturated guitar prelude toward a bare goodbye, and it makes the move without raising its voice.
Don’t Cross Yer Fingers opens the session with no singer in the room. Five and a half minutes, clean arpeggios first, then a thicker distortion, drums that begin on the cymbals and find the toms once the figure has somewhere to go. The bass stays warm and low. Hedgpeth leaves the edges rough, closer to a practice room than to a polished cloud. The piece knows how to build. It does not know how to leave. The last surge cuts off mid-breath, no fade, no tail. A restore button, withdrawn.
Ache is where the temperature settles. Chorus and delay on the guitars, a measured kit, a vocal set inside the wash rather than in front of it. The lyric keeps asking to be taken from this place, then circles a stranger in town, danger, an ache in a desert. “Take me from this place” is the line that holds. The arrangement stays faithful to a dream pop grain, soft wall, no sudden lift, coda that repeats until the plea becomes weather. That fidelity is also the drag. By the last minute the tension has nowhere new to go, and the song keeps walking the same block.
Night Drive makes the exit literal. A drum machine, warm pads, a soft bass figure, a voice close to a whisper. Leave town, leave the trouble, just for tonight. City lights, and the pain, put behind. The melody is the most immediate thing on the EP, and then it is the same melody. No bridge changes the street. The track is built for a drive that does not need a destination, which is honest, and which also leaves it a little static once the neon has been named.
Reset strips the electricity. Acoustic guitar, light drums, a vocal that hands the hook to wordless figures. The lyric wants the sea, a walk on the sand, routines left where they are. “Let’s reset.” “We will fix this mess one day.” Hope, stated plainly, with no costume on it. The choice to keep the peak unsung gives the song air. It also keeps the hook from sticking. You remember the temperature more than the tune.
I Guess It Is Goodbye closes the tabs. Acoustic guitar, a deep bass, keys and soft percussion arriving late. “I guess it is goodbye.” “I’m tired of pretending we make sense.” On the release, the parting picks up another line, love got away, and both of them pay. The repetition is the feeling. It is also the limit. The song tells the truth and then tells it again, with no turn that would wake the room.
What holds Reset E.P. is the sequence. A descent from the practice-room cloud to a lo-fi parting, written with a straightness that does not decorate the feeling. Single tracks sit in one dynamic for longer than they need to. Together they describe an afternoon that keeps being restarted and never quite cleared. The button works. The session is still open when the last chord ends.
