This EP serves as window dressing for the title track, which is from Phelps’s recent Sky like a Broken Clock album. But it’s elegant window dressing, thanks to the further efforts of Phelps’s sidemen here, drummer Billy Conway of Morphine and Tom Waits/Canned Heat bassist Larry Taylor. Conway in particular brings even more depth to Phelps’s already meaty lyric poetry, with his loose-tuned parade drum serving as a kind of heartbeat for the characters in the songs. And Phelps’s music is all about character. The population of numbers like the tragedy "Tommy" and the seven-minute inner odyssey "Frankenstein Party of Three: Your Table Is Ready" takes on more flesh with each verse of his linear narrative.

Of course, Phelps is also a character himself, tucked up under his wool hat and pulling out an overwhelming and expressive stream of improvisations from his guitar. He plays more often solo than with a band, and that’s a mixed blessing. But fewer six-string notes means more space for his writing and his gentle voice. And the EP closes with a live-recorded example of his solo slide-guitar mastery, "Lass of Loch Royale (If I Prove False to Thee)," where his purring slurred notes and falsetto-cresting voice transform what could be a traditional love ballad into a spiritual.