Sixpence None The Richer -My Dear Machine EP

When Sixpence None The Richer teamed with Charlie Peacock for his 2004 release, Full Circle, it was a pretty firm belief that this was the last we would hear from the collaborative efforts of Matt Slocum and Leigh (Bingham) Nash. While the duo went their separate ways - Slocum to work with Astronaut Pushers and Nash to launch a solo pop career - they would later learn that what they had together, musically, was something special that they couldn't replicate on their own apart from each other. With that realized late last year, Slocum and Nash decided 2008 would bring about the return of Sixpence None The Richer.

A lot has transpired in the lives of Slocum and Nash since Sixpence originally disbanded, including a broken relationship for Nash which has become a topic for her recent songwriting, especially on last year's collaboration with Delerium, entitled Fauxliage. The songs on Sixpence's first release this year, a four-song EP entitled My Dear Machine, seem to be heavily inspired by Nash's heartbreak as well, with lyrics that are brutally honest and painfully real throughout. Nash's sweet and soft vocals display more of this heartache this time around, as the listener can really feel what Leigh is going through. But the brutal honesty, coupled with the freedom that no ties to a record label for this release bring, lets the use of mild profanity creep in as Nash expresses her spiritual frustrations in "Amazing Grace (Give It Back)," "I knew a song that played in me / It seems I've lost the melody / So please, Lord, give it back to me.... You're everywhere in every time / And yet You're so d*mn hard to find." While most going through the Christian walk can empathize with a statement like that - being able to relate to the times in life where God seems absent - it's unfortunate to hear that on a Sixpence None The Richer release.

Lyrical themes aside, musically My Dear Machine feels very much like a Nash and Slocum composition. While a song like "Amazing Grace (Give It Back)" has a bit of the haunting darkness that was felt on Nash's Fauxliage project, the songs "My Dear Machine," "Sooner Than Later," and "Around" fit right in with the later Sixpence None The Richer art-pop approach. Some of the songs combine the pop flair of Divine Discontent with the more indie feel of the self-titled release, but there's a distinctly more bitter feeling than sad or melancholy that washes over the songs....

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