Pulling weeds

There’s a moment on Creeper Lagoon’s frustratingly mediocre Watering Ghost Garden when it’s tempting to call the San Francisco foursome a bunch of cop-outs — or, worse yet, liars. Perhaps surprisingly, the offending moment is not in the typically alt-rock rumba numbas that make up the bulk of the Creeps’ latest cookie-cutter EP. Those tracks — such as the band’s best bid for the big time, the insipid “Big Money Struggle” — can’t deceive precisely because they never promise anything in the first place. Instead, the band’s sincerity is called into question by the EP’s best track, the Grant Lee Buffalo-ish “Roman Hearts.” For three and half minutes of hardcore heartache, music chimes and shimmers while vocalist Ian Sefchick regrets what he can’t forget: “You fell in love and it went wrong ... Don’t ever look back at this place again.” With so much emotional history at stake, the moment is so brutally self-reflective and moving that it renders the rest of the album unnecessary and unwanted.

That’s because after such impossible beauty, it’s maddening that Creeper Lagoon even considers asking us — or itself — to settle for anything less. By expecting us to enjoy dime-a-dozen drivel like “Big Money Struggle” when we know they’re capable of so much more, they might as well be asking us to believe in a lie.

Jimmy Draper writes about music for Metro Times. E-mail letters@metrotimes.com.