Ultimatum by Long Winters

Ultimatum, a six-track EP from the Long Winters, came out on Barsuk Records in October 2005, a stopgap between When I Pretend to Fall and Putting the Days to Bed that doubles as a sneak preview: four of its songs were new, and they pointed straight at the next album. John Roderick still leads on guitar and vocals with Eric Corson on bass and vocals, but the band around them has shifted, with Mike Squires joining on guitar and keyboards and Nabil Ayers taking over percussion.

The centerpiece is "The Commander Thinks Aloud", with Matt Chamberlain sitting in on drums, a slow-building indie-rock hymn that swells from a hush into a lump in the throat. It had already surfaced in remixed form on MoveOn.org's Future Soundtrack for America compilation in 2004, and Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional thought enough of it to cover it in 2011.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.