Grant Cutler & The Gorgeous Lords

When Maggie Morrison and Grant Cutler broke the news that Lookbook was disbanding, they promised to continue making music separately. Just one month later, Cutler is already upholding his end with the debut EP of a side project turned full-time venture. Backed by The Gorgeous Lords (a few handsome members of The Plastic Constellations and Askeleton), Cutler is exploring unfamiliar territory. From the first few warm, resonant bass notes on opener “Hold On To Me,” the band sets a mood that’s dark and drowsy. Without Morrison on vocals, Cutler takes the mic and unleashes a croak not quite as profound as Leonard Cohen’s, but in the same broody ballpark. Don’t bother waiting around for Lookbook’s compact dance-floor beats—they’re long gone. The Gorgeous Lords have a closer local contemporary in Halloween, Alaska, particularly on “The Light”: Minimal percussion sleepily keeps time, and a background guitar is strummed deliberately without incident—until the very end, when the sound swells with layers of shimmering reverb.

Grant Cutler & The Gorgeous Lords gets away with sounding a little same-y because it’s so short—a full album of these slow and low-down tracks would be overkill. But that monotony is also why it’s so gratifying to hear “Our Love Is A Mighty Fortress” finally burst wide open, revealing a grand peak awash with the beatific vocals of backup singers—just in time for the disc’s end. It’s almost as if the whole point was to form a bubble around this gloomy atmosphere, then wait until the last moment to pop it. That’s fine for a four-song EP, but this EP doesn’t leave listeners wanting more so much as it leaves them asking, “What’s next?”

Grant Cutler & The Gorgeous Lords play their EP-release show on Wednesday, Oct. 20 at the Turf Club.