Oakland-based not-too-sugary, sometimes dissonant indie pop band makes good. This is Rogue Wave’s second album, but first proper studio album (first was self-recorded/released until subpop picked them up). Pretty standard instrumentation (guitars, drums, bass, keyboards). They often use the sweet indie pop‡disonance‡sweet indie pop formula. This one got a lot of good press and for good reason—it’s just really solid indie pop throughout. This is a step up from their first album.
-Adrian
My picks: all, but especially 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11 FCC: Clean (I think)
1. med-slow 3/4. Nice lush, catchy chorus.
2. medium tempo. pretty full beginning. backs off for the verses then back to full.
3. medium tempo. Acoustic guitar strumming. Nice vocal melody lines.
4. starts w/ guitar. fast rhythmic bass comes in.
5. med-fast. darker. Alternates between sparse and full sounding. dissonance near the end before coming back to the sweet pop. fake ending at about 1:10 left.
6. fast keyboard. Bandpassed vocals. fake ending about halfway through. totally sweet and unrelenting until it gets a bit distorted near the end.
7. acoustic guitar song. “screw California”
8. starts out a bit dark w/ subdued vocals. gets brighter in patches before the fade-away ending.
9. acoustic guitar. countrified.
10. med-slow. gets soft for vocals. lots of reverb on the vocals. breakdown—builds into reverb-filled dissonance near the end.
11. acoustic guitar and almost whispered vocals.