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.

‘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.

‘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.

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).

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‘Saurkraut’, the sophomore single from Talking to Bob, the new EP from Bronx-based Your Dog, might not be quite as dramatic, though holds the same desire to retreat into the vaguely supernatural ignorance and innocence that childhood represents. The Bronx-based band, featuring Kate FitzSimons, Julius Bowditch and Ian Bond (formerly of Margo), combine earnest vocals and upbeat acoustic guitar with harsh percussion and swamping distortion to highlight the juxtaposition between past and present, painting young adult angst as a seismic force caused by friction between the giant plates of childhood and maturity.

“Cause it’s been months since I’ve felt something short of nothing.
I just want something.
Actually, nothing is fine.

In the middle of a one lane highway
Sitting criss cross, opposite to you.
Playing jax, got a baseball bat.
How about that?”

The result is a cross between indie rock bands such as Cold War Kids and the sincere bedroom pop that has risen out of Bandcamp, oscillating between cynicism and sentimentality and never quite settling on either. The song delineates the Millennial condition of frustration, anger and doubt with no obvious source or target (“I don’t really know what I oppose, but I’m starting to think that it blows”), and the huge, limiting pressure to look/sound/be a certain way in a world dominated by online images. There is no answer here, childhood remains firmly in the past, but there is value in the question and comfort in hearing a shared complaint. How do we find peace and connection in this world? How do we love and be loved?

“Searching for the ways that I want to seem to those who don’t know me.
I just want to feel alright.”

Photo by Hayden Sitomer, Album art + tour poster by Aiyana Jaffe  

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