Cal Folger Day‘s‘Drom-d’reau’ EP would have left a better taste in the mouth if she hadn’t said “Cunt” two minutes and fifty-two seconds into it.The use of the word seems to be a quote from a hypothetical conversation the Brooklyn-born singer had with a man in Dun Laoghaire, but it still draws attention to the scattered and unsettled nature of the release as a whole. It unnerves you.

Incidentally, two minutes and fifty-two seconds is roughly halfway through the entire EP (actually, it’s roughly 40.9% through the EP), which is to say that the release falls a wee bit on the short side.

By the time you’ve digested the nature of Cal Folger Day and the intensity of De Liberties, you’re almost at the end of the CD. In a lot of cases, short songs are welcome and Sorry, Lonely and Ghost Hands are strangely the strongest songs on  ‘Drom-d’reau’. But it gives the whole piece an off-kilter feel.

While you might think that this is frustrating, it is in fact a strange mirror of the overall picture of Folger Day’s music. Her artwork, her posters, and her sound seem to hit a strange balance between odd and beautiful, and it makes you wonder whether it’s really thought out at all. See her recent poster for her show at the Cool Pony, Brooklyn for proof.

And there’re enough nuggets of ideas on the EP for the bones of an album. The nuggets are squeezed into these four tracks but you wish she had gone the distance. There are parts that are fantastically well written, Sorry, Lonely being a good example, but it seems like something is missing.

An interesting experiment would be if Cal Folger Day applied the ethos of ‘Drom-d’reau’ to a long-player. The artistic sentiment and the genuine melodic talent that comes across here could flourish in that setting.  But as it stands, ‘Drom-d’reau’ is a tease, hinting at things that could be. Have a listen but be prepared to want more.