It isn’t easy to make an EP full of sparky little folk-pop stormers, and many would chastise you for doing it. Lots of bands who do take up the challenge will fall by the perilous wayside en route to the radio-friendly, making it too twee, too samey, too saccharine. Not Ex Lovers though, who seem to have balanced perky melodies with just enough nuances to ensure plentiful return listens to their debut EP.Some have made comparisons to Belle and Sebastian, which stand to an extent due to the girl/boy harmonies and bouncy pop. But this band ain’t retelling surreal, provincial yarns, or at least not yet. At this stage things seem lyrically more straightforward for the band, recounting late-night musings about the peaks and troughs of young adulthood. They do use the female/male vocal effectively and avoid emotive overkill; it comes across as more of a subtle technique than some attempts, Slow Club springing to mind.The title track ‘You Forget So Easily’ bursts into life with a buoyancy that turns out to be synonymous with every track on the album. The traits may be tried and tested ”“ the anticipatory guitar pauses, the opening set-the-scene chords and jangly tangential sojourns, but it’s all very well executed. There’s a resemblance to Death Cab For Cutie here, in the confident, no-nonsense guitar strokes, melodies that evoke a sense of laid-back discovery, and even in the mildly feminine vocals (just substitute a boyish pleasance for Ben Gibbard’s more-American-than-American intensity). The record plays with an eloquent but youthful sagacity, as if Michael Cera is pondering existential transatlantic concerns in his Converse shoes.Ex Lovers are great with the upbeat, but it’s good to hear them tackling the less-than-perky on track two. ‘New Year’s Day’ is a hangover soundtrack for generation O, with its lethargic chords of regret and adolescent frustration. Late teens still smelling of vodka will make coffee as it soothes their bad head, thinking about that person from the night before ”“ Leo or Cassandra or James or Roxanne ”“ who burst their bubble like this little sad pop gem of a song.Cue soundtrack commissions to an indie version of Skins, and get ready to hear them on the radio. Savvy kids with precocious problems are going to like it.Ex Lovers on Myspace