Sometime you have to be honest right from the get-go, so here it is – I really don’t know what to make of Exitmusic. For three-quarters of the Secretly Canadian band’s EP From Silence, the New York duo of Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church seem to plough a drab furrow of gothic trip-hop, part Portishead, part Jesse Sykes and part Trent Reznor/Karen O (I’ve not heard the soundtrack to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo but I can just imagine). For the other track of the quartet, ‘The Hours’, the duo becomes a delightful dream-pop band with a fine ear for a killer chorus. So, will the real Exitmusic please step forward?

There’s a lot of pretension hanging over Exitmusic, from Palladino’s appearances in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire to the use of film footage from the king of arthouse, Andrei Tarkovsky, in their video for EP opener ‘The Sea’. They say the record deals with “themes of loss, both personal and universal, the destruction of nature and the destruction of our own nature”, and the duo appear to exist in an insular, gothically romantic world, with the music to accompany and complement. It’s a world of Radiohead’s Kid A, the grandeur of Sigur Ros and the electronics of Warp Records - however, the whole thing is drowned in an ocean of bass and layers of guitar and electronic ‘wizardry’. This is an incredible disappointment as you can hear Church’s ear for an arrangement, and Palladino’s husky voice is a small delight, but the duo’s indulgences appear to get the better of them for the most part.

If we were to strip back the tracks on From Silence, there’s a fine noirish alt.country album waiting to get out from underneath the palette of sounds that Church has coloured Palladino’s sketches with. As already mentioned, Palladino’s voice does call to mind Jesse Sykes, and I’d really like to hear her accompanied by less instrumentation, undressing the songs to their acoustic bare bones. But, when Palladino wails away on ‘The Modern Age’ amidst the maelstrom that surrounds her, it all sounds a bit ridiculous and over the top.

Returning to the highlight of the EP, ‘The Hours’, it has a lullaby quality that the rest of the songs lack, and chimes beautifully with Palladino’s voice aching and dominating the soaring chord progression surrounding her. Sadly, it’s a fleeting moment before Exitmusic returns to gloomy trip-hop with final track ‘The Silence’.

I can understand what Exitmusic have tried to achieve on From Silence, in that a couple in love have created a world in which they attempt to address the things that matter to themselves through shared music and influences. However, from the outside looking in it feels indulgent and pretentious, and heavily stylised.

If the duo (augmented by the addition of two members for live shows) choose to pursue the sound of ‘The Hours’, then personally I’d be happy but as it stands this EP really doesn’t work for me. Only time will tell what path Exitmusic choose to take.