When Tell Me When It's Over begins with a solo piano fanfare that lasts close to a minute-and-a-half, you know you're not dealing with an ordinary, live Dream Syndicate recording, and this longish EP, featuring five tunes from a July 1984 concert in Chicago, captured the band in a transitional period. The Dream Syndicate were touring in support of the album Medicine Show, and the performances reflect the dark but spacious mood of those sessions; Tom Zvoncheck, who played piano and organ on the album, tagged along for the tour and his contributions take up a lot of space in the arrangements of what had always been a guitar band, and hearing this edition of the group make their way through Tell Me When It's Over (the only song that didn't originate on Medicine Show) shows just how far they'd traveled stylistically in the three years they'd been together. Compared to The Day of Wine and Roses (a live album that documents a show the Dream Syndicate played the week their debut album was released), This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album sounds remarkably bigger, tighter, and more confident, but the guitar interplay between Steve Wynn and Karl Precoda lacks the tense spark that marked their best work, and while the band seems more comfortable with the Medicine Show songs than they did in the studio, they also seem to be searching for ways to make them sound as dark and wired as they did on plastic (and Wynn seems to have responded by having a few cocktails). After this tour was over, Precoda would leave the Dream Syndicate, AM would part ways with the group, and Paul Cutler's guitar work would take the band in a different aural direction for their next album, Out of the Grey; This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album … Live, Rovi

1		Tell Me When It's Over
2		Bullet with My Name on It
3		Armed with an Empty Gun
4		The Medicine Show
5		John Coltrane Stereo Blues