From the gritty, sun-drenched streets of El Paso, EEP burst onto the scene with ‘You Don’t Have To Be Prepared’ on Hogar Records—a daring, dream-pop manifesto inviting us to embrace the beauty of uncharted leaps.

It has been oft repeated throughout history that home is where the heart is; that is to say, you can make wherever you are in location or life a comfortable and safe space if you put your feelings and truth into it. Making said home is where the hard work begins, a task truly easier said than done when undergoing a tumultuous separation from the previous home. A love lost, a job gone, a band separated – all a roof that has collapsed under life’s mysterious ways, forcing the weary traveler to become the happy wanderer, even if not born to play the part. This is where remaining members of the band EEP found themselves when heading into their latest album, ‘You Don’t Have To Be Prepared.’

With their drummer and another leaving the band, shoegaze band EEP decided to find themselves all over again, the core now being trimmed to a trio. Thus consisting only of Rosie Varela (vocals, guitar, percussion), Ross Ingram (vocals, guitar, drums), and Sebastian Estrada (vocals, bass, drums), the wayward wayfarers had to wield the wheel of a worn but welcoming wagon, one they had already been driving together towards the horizon for the last four years. In search of inspiration, the group rediscovered a home recording left behind by a woman named Anne on a reel-to-reel tape recorder stashed away inside an organ at their recording studio space. What they found were vignettes from a lover leaving letters for another, feelings only separated by distance and the medium used. The sincerity and frankness of the messages left behind tugged on the heartstrings and struck the eardrums, leading the group to a new goal: Finish the story.

Throughout ‘You Don’t Have To Be Prepared,’ you will experience the refreshing sounds of a reinvigorated band reflecting on their previous dream pop soundscapes while refracting their ideas through the magnifying glass of a person they never met yet seemingly knew intimately well, combining facts from their lives with the fiction of a life they can only assume. Luscious layers of reverb and delay are deftly laid underneath vocal performances while guitars maneuver in and out of focus. In lieu of a dedicated drummer and keyboardist, each member participated in the genesis of both, combining their skills and utilizing the constructive possibilities of a recording studio to craft cohesive drum and piano tracks. On the introductory track ‘Ghost,’ the band carves a melancholic path forward, addressing previous cruces one carries with them while trying to start anew. Repeated guitar arpeggiation in the left channel shares bandwidth with obscured chords on the right to blend with the three distinct voices of the group, voices that ebb and flow throughout the song while the combined rhythmic power of percussive layers and patient bass glue the seams together. Patience in general is a virtue as the band confidently includes more subdued tracks like the instrumental ‘On Tenterhooks’ and ’14 Days,’ stretching out into dreamier landscapes without losing focus in extended passages. We even get to directly hear from Anne throughout the track ‘Here’s What I Want You To Remember,’ the candid spoken word home recording constantly whirring in the background to serve as a fresh canvas for musical inspiration. Humorously enough, EEP even chose to mirror the beginning musings from Anne, in which she discusses how she finished one side of the tape recording at the start of the track, by making this track start off side two of the physical vinyl release for this record.

<a href="https://eepsandsounds.bandcamp.com/album/you-dont-have-to-be-prepared">You Don’t Have To Be Prepared by EEP</a>

In closing, the final and title track ‘You Don’t Have To Be Prepared’ actually came first for EEP, before they had set out with the direction of the album in mind. It details the natural cadence of life, how focusing on your goals in response to change and desire is not something meant to be performed rigidly. We improvise, adapt, and overcome through acknowledgement of where we came from without stubbornly holding only to those values, constantly reevaluating ourselves and our positions in kind with an ever-changing world. Thus, we don’t have to be prepared for what happens next; we’ll make a way out and through, just as EEP has on their new record, You Don’t Have To Be Prepared.

“We decided to take her storyline and expand on”

How is your band name pronounced? Is it an acronym or perhaps even a sort of backronym?

Ross: Rosie and I had a really good session one day, and I was driving home and listening to the band Folk Implosion. We had been talking about band names. I was thinking about band names that came from lyrics and things like that. And the song that happened to be on was called ‘E.Z.L.A.’ I tried to figure out a way to turn that into El Paso and came up with E.Z.E.P. which somehow became E.E.P. But, I liked it more as a sound, as a word, not as an abbreviation. So, EEP as a sound sounded kind of like a fun band name. I mentioned it to Rosie, and she loved it. As we mentioned it to each person, everybody kind of got behind it. It’s a name without a real meaning.

Who stumbled upon the tape recordings of Anne? Do you have any clues as to their origins?

Ross: So we don’t actually know anything beyond what’s on the tape. We made a decision early on that we weren’t gonna try to hunt this person down. We assume that they’re either elderly or gone at this point because we got the organ and the tape player from an estate sale. Just from context, it sounds like she’s probably 50s to 60s, so not a young woman. But for her to be open to the idea of falling in love and uprooting her life to go across the country to be with the one she loved was really inspiring and beautiful. It was a reminder to not let go of that kind of youthful, wide-eyed optimism and willingness to take risks and chances. And that at any point in your life, no matter your age, your life can change radically one way or the other at any moment.

Rosie: Ross had spoken about this tape probably five years before we even worked on the record and he had transferred it to digital. One day we just all sat and listened to it, which was about 38 minutes, right? More or less. And so we listened to it, and then the thought just crossed all of our minds, What if we wrote songs about this? What if we wrote in her voice or in general of anyone who’s going through these kinds of changes, and it just kind of evolved from there.

Ross: Yeah, we decided to take her storyline and expand on and fictionalize it as our basis for all the songs.

When choosing directions to tread on this newest release, the genres utilized blend seemingly effortlessly, and in a band where everyone shares instrumental duties, everything feels very cohesive. How were these decisions determined, or what can you share about the songwriting process?

Ross: After working together in the studio consistently for over five years, a lot of that happens organically. Many of the songs were written together, in the studio, from start to finish. We would start from a rough idea or a specific musical prompt, and then work outward from there and see where the song took us.