There’s something satisfying about a great elevator album. Whether it’s your go-to brain-candy for when you’ve got an obscene amount of spreadsheet work to do and a boss crowing down your neck, or that “just weird enough” record for which you’ve shamelessly created a playlist for quick retrieval when a member of the opposite sex has decided to sit down on your bed, everyone needs a few good ones. Stuff that’s interesting to hear, but doesn’t necessarily inspire sing alongs. Something that piques the rhythmic tongue we don’t all flap about at all times but is sub-atomic enough that it doesn’t inspire Katy Perry antics.

It’s really too bad that oOoOO has not created that album.

It’s been two years since we heard from oOoOO last and it seems that Chris Dexter Greenspan’s stepped two years into the past. While he was a master of what would (offensively) be referred to as “witch house” in the past, I’d think that a few years and a bit of growing would pull him out of such a clichéd tricks. On this EP–titled Our Love Is Hurting Us (twee much?)–he falls into the same traps we’ve heard before. Still a master of combining that hard to place R&B rhythm alongside haunting lyrics and just the right amount of faked guitar solo (see “Starr”) there’s little beyond elevator music here. True elevator music. The kind that might sound good while stoned in the dark with headphones on alone, but that once you leave on during any sort of conscious activity, you can’t pick out one track from the next.

It’s not all bad. It’s entirely possible that this genre isn’t my thing. But I wanted something more. Some sort of hook in the tracks to hang on to. Some sort of something beyond polite rhythms that still tried to spook me whenever they decided the time was opportune. A shame, for all the reverb and echo along the soothingly few tracks (only five, checking in at a micro sub-18 minute weight class), there’s little that continues to resound with me.

But again. Maybe I’m not the consumer. If you like forgettable freaky stuff, check it out.