Isn’t the music just too dreamy?

Big Fang’s Everything & Nothing at Once, pt 2 supplements a five-song EP with seven demos. The EP, produced by Sam Carlson’s Sans Serif, is a 90s-flavored power-pop rampage through dismay and betrayal, framed by Twin Peaks references. Listening is like watching a live band at the Roadhouse. Will Audrey vibe to it?

Come take a track-by-track listen with me on Spotify (bottom) or on Bandcamp. You can enjoy the EP without having been a Twin Peaks fan (even armed with a cup of joe, my fan knowledge is rusty). 

Fire
“Fire, walk with me” was the iconic line of the show (nobody knows what it means). This track, co-written with Joe Russo, shifts the energy and intimacy to “fire… dance with me.”

The song is, in its way, Audrey’s dance. It’s not a replica of the cool jazz theme of the show, though it echoes unresolved discord. It’s a live-band show at the Roadhouse with sly references to Audrey’s penchant for attention-seeking and trouble. 

Please
Beneath confident REM-esque guitars lurk distortion and discordant riffs. Memory Celle’s vocals feel like the ghost of a past argument. It’s a fun representation of surface sunshine as white lies.

Who Knows You
This anthemic track is fun to dance to at live shows and profoundly uncomfortable in its lyrics. Co-written with Grayson Jeffries, it seems to address the long-time confidant’s wear-and-tear, turning into guilt at not saying or doing enough. But the chorus throws responsibility back on the other — in the context of this EP, it points to masks, half-truths, and disingenuous tales.

Throughout the EP, production points up disjointed relationships and discordant feelings. This track prickles with surprise riffs, including an elegiac Big Country-esque moment.

Frame
My long-term favorite track from the Human Distance EP, Frame reappears with the driving energy of REM’s Driver 8. The shift from “sifting through your life” to “sifting through your lies” is, in context, pure Dale Cooper. Co-written with Memory Celle, it’s a break-up song focused on the search for meaning.

Can We Move On
From intertwined guitar lines to surges among moods and styles, this feels like a song Audrey would dance to. It has the feel of inviting loss as resolution, framed like Dale Cooper’s strange arc of discovery. Fire, dancing with you, burns something away.

This five-song narrative of suspicion, half-truths, and decaying connections forms the EP. What follows are Tony Mascolo’s  GarageBand-recorded demos, a fun look into the creative process.

The first three demos — Mondays, Take, and Same Old Song — appear on the earlier Everything & Nothing at Once, pt 1, produced by Sans Serif. It’s worth taking a comparative listen to hear how studio production, while staying true to the original concept, grounded and paced the songs differently.

The next two — Her Own Way and Summer Door — play into the REM side of Big Fang’s sound, with a psychedelic undertone. Falling in Line taps into a darker, meditative Pearl Jam mood. The final instrumental, Sonic Lizzy, is the signature Big Fang power sound.