ake the Cowboy Robots Cry is a rather peculiar release for Beachwood Sparks, and it is not necessarily one of their stronger moments. This EP finds the band teamed with DNTEL masterminded Jimmy Tamborello. At first I was a little nebulous concerning this collaboration, considering that it really is a rather peculiar team. Combine Beachwood Sparks’ neo-psychedelic country with DNTEL’s glitch and IDM textures? Honestly, it sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. Oddly enough, it isn’t a disaster, though the results aren’t really much of anything at all.

Given Tamborello’s involvement, one may expect to be confronted with more electronic textures, perhaps even something vaguely similar to the track Beachwood Sparks’ vocalist, Chris Gunst, sang on DNTEL’s 2001 release, Life is Full of Possibilities. Aside from some scratchy vinyl effects, background strings, and dreamy sirens on “Hibernation” and similar workouts on “Sing Your Thoughts”, Tamborello’s involvement seems to be rather nonexistent.

This EP also delves into the more jam-based side of the band. “Drinkswater” and “Ponce de Leon Blues” are prime examples of this sort of track, both clocking in at around seven minutes a piece. “Drinkswater” builds slowly on a simple melody and the almost frail vocals of Gunst, meandering for over seven minutes, occasionally melodically “falling apart” and then building back together. The problem is its length. There are some interesting ideas in the song, and in general, it’s well done. But in the end, the ideas and sounds are not good or interesting enough to stretch over seven minutes; it simply becomes too repetitive. However, on the opposite side of the spectrum, the other “jam” based song, “Ponce De Leon Blues” is perhaps the EP’s strongest track. With this track, Beachwood Sparks takes the simple route and makes it work. The melody is simple and restrained, giving the track room to breathe. Perhaps it’s more of Tamborello’s work, but that breathing room is unobtrusively filled with spacey atmospherics, light organ, and a touch of reverb. Granted, it has some of the same limitations as “Drinkswater”, being a bit too long and repetitious, but the band manages to get everything else right.

“Galapagos” is by far the worst track on the EP. It features Gunst’s vocals in the forefront and a seemingly endless, circular melody plucked out on a banjo. The track also features some odd, warbly vocal effects at completely random times and sound effects of waves cresting and breaking. Finally, the EP closes with the most energetic track here, “Ghost Dance 1492”. Vaguely reminiscent of “Desert Skies”, the opening track to their 2000 self-titled debut album, the song bounces along for three minutes with vocals sounding as though they are being sung on helium.

In the end, Make the Cowboy Robots Cry showcases some interesting things about the band. It really is a shame that the collaboration with Jimmy Tamborello did not yield much of interest, though in retrospect I think it would be interesting to see where a more fully formed collaboration could go. The EP shows a lot of willingness for the band to try new things and take their sound to a different level, but unfortunately, many of the experiments are left without much form and brings the band’s weaker qualities to the forefront. However, it is certainly no great loss: with a little more restraint and useful experimentation, the next Beachwood Sparks full-length could be quite interesting.