High Hazels :: "Hearts Are Breaking"

The deployment of "to be" as a helping verb in the title of High Hazel's single, "Hearts Are Breaking" obfuscates some of the crime. Who is breaking these hearts, and how is it done? It also implies something of the moment, not "Broken Hearts" or the cautiously prescriptive, "Hearts Break", instead, in the ever unfolding now, "Hearts Are Breaking", an anonymous and complicated negligence. Sure, it sounds a lot like the Smiths, the most obvious comparison for this Sheffield four-piece. Inside this derivation there lies something of the timeless as the band wistfully works its way through lyrics like, "even in skies of different hue/I won't forget you" as plaintive 1950s rock guitars weave their way around the hook. Ultimately, High Hazels craft a mixture of the resurgent present amid winking odes to the past, a balance of time and tense.

Hints :: "Cher Amie"

Plaintive, reverb-rich guitars and a leading bass line instantly inculcate comparisons between Brooklyn guitar rock band, Hints and their ideological forerunner, the Smiths. Of course, Morrissey was more sardonically depressed and drank less PBR - which may or may not count as an animal product in the world of Moz. Hints don't have quite the personal narrative of the Smiths, a band that did tragi-comedy better than anyone else, but the Brooklyn iteration does have its second batch of singles ready, an A-side, "Cher Amie" as good as any from the borough this year.

The Lawlands :: "Elsewhere

San Franciscan indie pop outfit The Lawlands craft single, "Elsewhere" as the crux of a teleological crisis. Do the traveling circuses of our lives have any intentional destination? Do these moveable feasts have a meaning in their movement? Full of Smiths-indebted affectation and Magnetic Fields-inspired baritone, "Elsewhere" crashes around with a dark purpose: the doubting of place and purpose. Vocalist Anthony Ferraro describes these sojourned locations as powerline jungles, brilliant darkness, echoing wastelands, an aggressive modernism with a flippant hook, "by the time you arrive/we'll have evacuated elsewhere." The interstitial proves more disorienting, the ends we seek either transformed, obfuscated or somehow unrecognizable in the very arriving at them. In essence, by the time you get there, it won't be there anymore.

Shout Out Louds :: "Blue Ice"

The Shout Out Louds return nearly three years after the somewhat underwhelming LP, Work with "Blue Ice," a sweeping bit of widescreen pop. If Work was world-weary and a bit too intentional, the band here sounds committed to something more earnestly down-tempo. Adam Olenius, the mumbling soul of the band's truly excellent Our Ill Wills and Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, the voice who launched a thousand Morrissey and Cure comparisons, is his usual distant and morose self (see "Parents Livingroom") on "Blue Ice" . He braces his vocal against a playful piano riff and a flickering guitar line, as the slow-drive arrangement describes a sort of cold clarity in form and function. The band will have a full length out on Merge early next year, "Blue Ice" only a teaser 7", not possessing half the bombast and grandiosity of whatever will serve as the first single. Expect Olenius, for all his thoughtfulness and pacing here, to again find stirring moral victories - this is, after all, a band who wrote a song entitled "The Comeback" - somewhere up in the sky.

Girl In A Coma :: "Smart"

When Morrissey wrote "Girlfriend In A Coma" in early 1987, it was a loose metaphor for the thin line between love and hate. I suspect he never thought three girls from Texas would reappropriate the idea, ditch the relationship angle and make themselves, metaphorically of course, that Girl In A Coma that Morrissey and Marr were so seriously considering strangling. On "Smart" the girls don't sound like the Smiths but they do sound like the Sundays. Stopping short of the pure pop of "Here's Where The Story Ends", a song like "Smart" relies on brightly textured guitars and soaring arpeggios, all backing wistful lyrics like "I've never been in love like this". If Morrissey stared at a comatose lover and thought of how easy it would be to kill her, Girl In A Coma diverge, wondering how crushing it would feel to be alone.

Listen :: Girl In A Coma - "Smart"