Aloha’s new EP Light Works may have arrived billed as a stripped down and earthy detour from their typically dense prog-rock drama, but there’s still plenty of otherworldly noise to be found on its seven tracks. Even the album’s most austere songs, like closing piano ballad “Equinox,” manage to make room for plenty of adornments - vintage keyboard gurgles, ghostly layers of harmony vocals, gently rattling percussion – Aloha’s blood is simply too extraterrestrial in nature to ever really make themselves over convincingly as Americana artists – and thankfully so.

So what does stripped down Aloha mean? More acoustic guitars, a softer edge to the buzzing synthesizers, less metallic grinding in general, but still plenty of front man Tony Cavallario’s silky smooth tenor, strangely tuned stringed instruments, and loopy lyrics about atypical topics like global warming (“Rhododendron hold your head / You’re world has reached the end/Warmth it has confused the ground and every sleeping bud is waking now”). When the group chooses to approximate straight ahead pop on cuts like “The End” it’s an eminently enjoyable experience but the low key goose bumps provided by moody ballads like “Gold World” provide longer lasting albeit subtler listening rewards, the gorgeous descending keyboard riff at the song’s core rising up out of its downbeat surroundings like a Phoenix. Leave it to Aloha to have their conception of simplicity come off sounding sumptuous.