The mischievous, frolicsome style is made clear from the intro of opening track ‘Beach House’, the pseudo-ironic title announcement (“The co-oh-ne!“) preceding a plucky and playful opening verse. There’s an innocence to the sound, but one more adolescent than childlike, the vocals balanced between earnestness and vulnerability and edged with antagonism too. But the latter is as much in self-defence as spite, a kind of school years jostling for fun and friendship with in-jokes abound, the days of falling out and making up within the same day, creating abstract loyalties on a whim that change as often as the direction of the wind.

The style extends right down to the way the tracks are put together. Often short and boisterous, these are songs of fickle rhythms, heading in one direction then pivoting in another on a flight of fancy. The guitars meander one moment and bounce off in jagged arcs the next, the vocals at times sugar sweet one and others confrontational. Songs that want to be your best friend but then do a double take, looking you up and down, twirling gum around around their finger with a cool detachment.

Photo by Julia Leiby

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