Long Walks On The Beach :: "We're Growing Up"

There is no good way to leave the world and only few good ways to get old in it. Long Walks On The Beach, one of our favorite projects for myriad reasons, offer a case for maturity that is both clear-eyed and stupidly romantic. The lyrical references chart territory regarding the power of "moonlight", and lines like "in our dreams, the crowd swells" all over shabby guitars and crystalline strings. The final shambling conclusion brings the arrangement to a moment of self-actualization around the tautology of the title, "We're Growing Up". Never has this felt more true and more valuable and, blessedly, without the specter of nagging injuries, day jobs, consumer debt, the grinding uncertainties of adult life that never make the cut at college commencement addresses. If there exists a good way to get old, this is surely it, three minutes of perfect pop music and a sense that all cannot be lost when so much unfolds to the vanishing points forward.

Fast Years :: "Young Heart"

Brooklyn's Fast Years and their debut single, "Young Heart" intimate the kind of awesomely poor choices made between adolescence and adulthood. This is the brand of rock that suits whipping days of hard living and fatalist romances. The band prescribes this type of love with a general shrug, "Let's fall apart", an edict that seems to operate as general and specific. Broadly, the project here is to romanticize and enliven the experiences of the young, an area that certainly needs no romanticizing or enlivening. So, perhaps, the charm of "Young Heart" is in its chorus and doe-eyed assumptions that anyone needs to be encouraged to have their heart trashed by another in mortal post-adolescent combat. In the same way the drums and surf guitars merge with the clap track and the refrain, the band expects that the young speed on a collision course toward one another. This much is obvious, the wreckage though, they estimate, is entirely necessary.

TRAILS AND WAYS :: "Nunca"

TRAILS AND WAYS return with a second promotional single from their coming LP, Trilingual. This, entitled, "Nunca", Spanish for "never", opens with tape fuzz and street noise before breaking into an ebullient, warm guitar hook, like Vampire Weekend drenched full of sunshine and dried in the breeze on a clothesline. The aesthetic moves south from there, featuring an increasingly Brazilian bossanova influence that the band says was inspired by a warm day in Sao Paulo spent listening to Drake. And the vagaries of R&B creep their way in at the edges, a male-female trade-off that sounds like Stars with Amy Milan transplanted toward the equator. But the guitar hook carries the arrangement, one of those sounds that explains the reasoning for indie rock imperializing World Music in the first place: pretty and exotic without losing its urbanity (here to mean: "sophistication" not as a synonym for "urban"). The party, the Good Life, is out there somewhere, likely south and it sounds exactly like this.

She's So Rad :: "Confetti"

The montage always works best in slow motion. Nothing lands in this half-speed universe, objects taking off and soaring in infinity. She's So Rad from Auckland, New Zealand have a perfect handle on this aesthetic, slowing their lead single, "Confetti" down a third from what most modern record producers would recommend. "Confetti" slides along with the Dramamine haze that would have never survived most band's rehearsal phase, let alone the increased tempo, audio compression, double-tracked vocals and a chorus that has to appear in the first 40 seconds at the recommendation of the staff of most modern music production houses. This is more languid until it isn't. When the drums hit, they come from every side, an ode to the early New Order singles to which this song's rhythm section owes so much. The power lies squarely in the lyrical imagery of the title, a confetti cannon exploding as the credits roll, the BMPs slow, everything suspended and spinning in defiance of all conceivable natural law.

Jinja Safari :: "Head In A Blender"

Afro-pop turns beautifully glossy in the hands of Sydney, Australia band Jinja Safari. A blend of Mumford and Sons harmonies, Jonquil's Graceland affectations and the holier-than-thou elevation of bands like Lord Huron and Local Natives, Jinja and "Head In A Blender" aren't only the latest to do this type of miasmatic world music, but they might be one of the best. With a string of one-off singles on their Soundcloud page that are as unexpectedly charming as any band since Fanfarlo's debut demos, the band channels a pleasant tribalism as unoriginal as it is entirely satisfying, the kind of thing that reminds A&Rs why they have a rolling office chair to push back from their desks. "Head In A Blender" features an austere little guitar line behind layers and layers of vocals, a marching beat setting the stakes for a sort of journey where there are stories in the soil and where the lyrics "got caught up in the bloody pursuit of truth" mean absolutely everything. The final movement swings and sways before hurling itself out into the ether, chimes and echos left to sort out the details.

Holograms :: "Chasing My Mind"

A bizarre intersection of garage rock and hi-fi synths, Sweden's Holograms emit an energy that is both confusing and infectious on lead single, "Chasing My Mind". The lead synthesizer line, a motif introduced early and expanded upon with an increasingly tweaking treble, has been given a voice all its own. Notably offset from the lead vocal, the synth hook operates as the chorus, orbiting spasmodically around the melody with the gravitas of an over-caffeinated elementary schooler saying, "Mom look, look Mom, Mom look." Perhaps it is just the right dose of youthful energy for a band who looks to blow far past the green copper rooftops of Stockholm.

California Wives :: "Marianne"

The surprise isn't how charming and singable California Wives' music can be, it's how easy they make it all sound. Like you and three acquaintances could go down to Guitar Center, learn a few chords, pick up some equipment and then sign a deal with Vagrant Records. On "Marianne", they update their stylistic direction from inheritors to the Stills' throne to something closer to Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - and here it doesn't help that the second word of the first verse is "heartbreak" and fourth, "teenage". The big chiming synthesizers in post-chorus back the band's trademark driving guitars (see: "Blood Red Youth" and "Tokyo") all around fatalist lyrics like, "They will find you out, even though you tried". The chorus, one of those refrains still rooted in proper nouns for when bands are young and still write about cities and girls, is charming and accessible, a final trip through those big guitars and huge booming synths, democratic enough to feel like anyone could have written them and elitist enough that no one did.