as another note, this sort of thing happens with a lot of bands. radiohead is pretty notable because the play songs live for so long before settling down, recording, and releasing them properly. there are always hi quality recordings of those live versions of the songs, and by the time the record comes out, those die hards who had the live recordings are saying "man, this really lost a lot of energy/they really mucked the studio version up with electronics/found sounds/etc." but then tons of people buy the record anyway and those studio versions, after a while, turn out to have a lot more to offer than the live recordings did. they just don't have the novelty, which is a big selling point.

same with the ep project vs. the broken string. the novelty of the ep project and being part of the small but loyal fanbase was a huge part of all of our love for those songs. of course, none of that would have mattered if the songs hadn't been great. but it was part of it.