Pitchfork

Remember how innocent we were back in 2000? Bush and Gore looked "about as different from one another as J. Crew and Banana Republic," a slick-haired congressman named Gary Condit was a really big deal, and the stock market was booming. Meanwhile, Sleater-Kinney guitarist/singer Carrie Brownstein and former Helium frontwoman Mary Timony were quietly working on a full-length follow-up to their 1999 K Records EP as the Spells, The Age of Spells.

Brownstein has now posted four songs from that unfinished album over at her NPR blog, Monitor Mix. Two will be available for download for two weeks. The more immediate of the two, "Bat vs. Bird", should take you back pretty fast, with its sweetly lo-fi vocals and Sunny Day Real Estate-style guitar intricacies. It's the melancholy melody and evocative metaphor that come in on the chorus, though, that make the time travel worth the trip. And the handclaps!

You can hear all four tracks and read a conversation between Brownstein and Timony on Brownstein's blog, where she writes: "In the summer of 2000, we recorded four songs in a couple of hours, the same amount of time in which we'd written them a few months earlier. If nothing else, making these songs available now is The Spells' way of finally acknowledging that we aren't going to get around to finishing the album." 

MP3/Stream:> The Spells: "Bat vs. Bird"

[previously unreleased]