After releasing "Mirror", they decided it would be best to move to New York, where they slept in a van that they had bought with money from the label. It was in New York that bassist and vocalist Mattie Safer, a freshman studying jazz at NYU joined the band. He had met them the previous summer when they were touring through Washington DC. He joined the band in the fall of 1999, prior to the 2001 release of the six-song EP "Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks" on Sub Pop. The addition of Safer proved to pivotal for the band, according to Jenner. In 2006 he said, "There were five people in the band before Matt in the space of just over a year. He was the first person that was actually good. He was musically way better than us and brought a lot of stability. Listening to him for the first time made me think that I actually had better learn to play my own instrument."