Premiere: Obi Best, ‘Tropical Fish’

Kevin Bronson on
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For Alex Lilly, it’s always been juggling act. Her music fronting the quintet Obi Best darts spryly in and out of pop, jazz and psychedelia. Her career always found her with a lot of balls in the air: duties backing the likes of Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, the Bird and the Bee and Juliette Commagere; a side project (Touché) with bandmate Bram Inscore; and, recently, joining Inara Geoge, Eleni Mandell and Becky Stark in the Living Sisters, a gig that found her onstage at Disney Hall on Saturday night as part of the big Patsy Cline tribute.

So Lilly just laughs when asked about the long gestation period of “Sentimental Education,” the new Obi Best EP that follows up her well-regarded debut album “Capades” back in early 2009. “I’ve been letting things simmer,” she says.

The EP, which has actually been finished for nine months and finally comes out next week, simmers a bit itself. Lilly’s playful melodies are carried on a sturdier percussive frame, and, while still wrestling with matters of the heart, her songs take a bolder approach. “The first album was kind of me in a bubble,” she says. “This time I was much more interested in commenting on the outside world.”

Not that Lilly isn’t interested in a little fun. The Phil Pinto-directed video for “Tropical Fish” – a song she says is informed as much by Spandau Ballet as the Pretenders – captures some Bollywood-inspired poolside frolicking. Splash.

Like Lilly, her Obi Best bandmates have covered a lot of ground since “Capades.” Drummer Barbara Gruska’s band with her brother Ethan, the Belle Brigade (in which Obi Best’s Aaron Arntz also plays), recently released its debut. And, among other duties, Inscore has played in Beck’s band (among others), Wendy Wang has become part of Evan Voytas’ lineup.

||| Stream: “Tropical Fish”

||| Live: Obi Best celebrates its EP release with a show Monday night at It’s a School Night at Bardot.