It tasted of rain on the corner, and flat battleship skies pressed lasciviously against indifferent roofs, including a tessellated party hat cupola — or the mysteriously inland shell of an inexplicably massive Conus marmoreus, if one is, as I am, nautically inclined — of heather gray scales adorned with ridges and a cap the particular shade of verdigris normally reserved for statuary, toothpaste, and the Miami Dolphins squads of the early 1970s, and the comparably bare brick plane above a mural, the tropical nature of which — said nature consisting of two inexplicably massive Corona bottles pouring aurelian cerveza into what one assumes is the mighty river, feeding the verdant rain forests the aforementioned bottles appear to levitate over, that must cut its gilded way through the jungle from its originating point high in the distant mountains dominating the azure horizon — belied the day’s overcast nature and found itself similarly betrayed by the gentle poking through of the red brick beneath the paint, so as to be provided with a warm, Banana Republic-like fade, which would surely come into its own once the hot, dry winds began to blow down Fullerton, both the mural and the sky out of sync with each other and coming away, if not stronger, than definitely more interesting for the juxtaposition.

But enough of the corner; the above was merely an exercise to show how the detail-addled mind may bring to bear textures and colors and shapes upon a small space, to infinitely reduce it and thereby make it infinitely intriguing, and is, in reality, really a byzantine way to get to my (relatively simple) point, namely, that such adoration of minutiae will most likely coax the most pleasure from Esta Vivo’s Carry You To My Mouth.

There is a bedroom pop feeling to the Chicago-based Vivo’s EP, and as is s.o.p. for the genre there is a sense of intimacy to the proceedings. But this is a bedroom lined with post-punk posters and featuring a sizable window — not overlooking Central Park and Fullerton, our corner from before, but someplace either cozier, e.g., Bernard and Wrightwood, or livelier, say, where Damen and Milwaukee and North all meet — through which light streams and for the most part dissipates the melancholia so often associated with bedroom acts.

Vivo sings in a low, flat baritone, a tongue depressor of a voice that plays gray sky to his music’s Corona mural — indeed, the plinking, gentle sunshine of “Smile Back” directly calls to mind those forever hovering, boundlessly generous bottles and lush, drunken jungles — and calls to mind Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Dave Gahan, et. al. Such lead vocals may be something of an acquired taste (common complaints tend to revolve around singers of Vivo’s stripe being either “depressing,” “monotone,” or, taking into consideration the combination of the two, “boring”) but they more than carry a brief, four-song EP, particularly one with Carry‘s sense of adventure, which is where the above lesson on texture and detail finally come in to play.

“Sweet Tooth” is a prime example of the corner/sky/mural thesis, at first glance a seemingly innocuous combination of Joy Division vocals, pleasingly plastic Fine Young Cannibals drums, and a distorted crunch of the kind Black Mouth Super Rainbow is wont to murmur over, until one looks deeper, picking up upon a barely existent low end that crawls forward, like the belly scales of a snake, serving as the song’s subliminal engine; it slithers most distinctively through the headphones at around a minute 38, a barely perceptible shade of difference in the bass line, only to be buried again — this time with the aid of fluttering little synths — and reduced to a memory.

Warm, coppery guitars and piano similarly hide noodling string lines on the slightly saccharine “My Thing,” while the unsettling-yet-pleasurable “Green Thumb” seems to end before it begins, melting away like Suboxone under the tongue, all bird chips and major depression.

Carry You To My Mouth is short and promising, but suffers from the peculiar problem of relying upon textual dissection in order to avoid becoming transient; it is music of a moment, pretty but lacking the power to haunt.

(Mush Records, no address provided)

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B. David Zarley is a freelance writer based in Chicago. You can find him on Twitter @BDavidZarley.