Album Notes

The Spelling Sounds EP caps a relatively brief but remarkable career for Athens, Georgia’s An Epic At Best. While the record most likely represents the band’s swan song, it captures the band reaching its creative peak. The band’s trademark sound – piano-driven pop songs – are ever present, though the band’s handful of tracks run the gamut of high-tempo jaunts to low-tempo melancholia.

An Epic At Best was borne from the ashes of the Athens emo band Cold Weather Romance. Following that band’s demise, bandmates Robert Gunn, Natalie Roberts, and Criswell Collier chose to go in a different musical direction, recruited James McGaw, and formed An Epic at Best in late 2003. Collier left the band to continue post-graduate studies and was replaced by Roy Coughlin shortly after tracking its highly successful debut, There Will Be Rain.

As with There Will Be Rain, The Spelling Sounds EP was recorded at Downtown Athens Recording Studio under the watchful eyes and ears of engineer Eric Friar. The band originally set out to record a full-length record in the fall of 2007, when Gunn relocated to France to continue his education. The band decided to wrap up the sessions with an EP worth of songs, which puts a nice bow on its all-too-short career.