CVS at Night are a psychedelic indie pop band which rose from the ashes of previous acts Evi Antonio and Yellow Eyes, its four members uniting to create a full album when only a six-song EP was planned. The result is Screw Your Brains, a melting pot of retro and contemporary influences all joined by the band’s primary motivating image and theme: “the off-kilter, midnight glow of a CVS Pharmacy”.
As you might expect then, this is an album made for night time. Opener ‘Olivia’ is a chirpy indie pop number, playing with the sort of midnight melodrama that’s fulfilling beneath bright lights, a late drive through neon-drenched streets. ‘Power Couple’ starts cinematic in the traditional sense, before morphing into a rambunctious pop song, while ‘Depressed Surfer’ lives up to its title, possessing a blank cool that feels as wide and flat as your worst day on the waves. ‘Hit and Run’ opens with an almost Western vibe, a sort of this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us attitude updated for four wheels and motors, though the lyrics highlight something darker and more sad.
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‘Mudd Club’, featuring former Selebrities lead Maria Usbeck, is the record’s most danceable number, playing like some early-hours disco where the good feeling has given way to a not entirely agreeable melancholy, while, with its slow sad tempo, ‘White Boy Stu’ sounds like a lonely walk home with nothing but fading adrenaline and alcohol for company. It’s here the idea of the pharmacy glow becomes palpable, though in reality it’s nothing to do with scientific names or colourful boxes or strip lighting. Instead it’s something less nameable, recognisable only as a departure from what is familiar during the day.
‘Pretenders (Hit 2 Run)’ decelerates even further, decimal points away from reaching a complete standstill, the electronics arising as if from some blank dream space, the vocals either struggling into focus or else drifting out. Eventually the rhythm clicks to form an increasingly un-subdued pop song, fluidity shaking free from the disparate elements.
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‘Cheeky’ continues the restrained trend, at least at first, though bombs into near-transcendental life somewhere around the midpoint, as though the album has meandered so far into the late night dark it’s pushed through into some secret, thrilling place. Drawing energy from this, ‘Weeping Roses’ ends with brisk and upbeat indie pop, capping off the release on the crest of a wave.
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Screw Your Brains is out now via Invertebrate Music and you can get it from the CVS at Night Bandcamp page (there’s a tape release coming soon, too).