Recorded in Australia merely a month before its release, the digital-only Plagues and Snakes EP represents the first new material from Brooklyn's Les Savy Fav since either a 2004 seven-inch (for the superfans, and collected on the singles comp Inches) or the excellent Go Forth (the rest of us). Either way, new Les Savy Fav is new Les Savy Fav, and only the clean-shaven would find anything to hate in singer/bear's bear Tim Harrington's two newest songs. "When You Wake Up a Snake" follows the lead of past LSF classic "Adoptuction" with its ornate storyline (like this summer's looming blockbuster Snakes on a Plane, it's all in the title), but also with a surprisingly tender arrangement: piano, Harrington's sing-song lilt and some occasional guitar. It's a new-look LSF that we're whole-heartedly behind. The other song, "Rage in the Plague Age," is flat-out fierce with a '70s NYC punk bridge and more fuzz than a bearded navel. Here's to the next two songs in 2008!