What they're looking for, though, is probably love, that eternal pop music topic – there’s romance in the air throughout this album, even if it's not always the forever-and-ever kind of love (check out the gauzy “Staying There For a While” or the winsome seduction of “Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile).” Their characters are reckless, awkward, endearingly goofy romantics, like in “The Apartment,” where new lovers exult “Don’t wanna go home” even as they giddily admit “we may need vaccinations.” Even an ex-partner is deliberately remembered with affection in "It's A Red Fade That Leaves in a Warm Way."
Full disclosure: songwriter/singer/guitarist Rob Keith teaches at my kids’ school, and we’ve chatted about music; once I even sold him extra tickets to a Ray Davies concert. But I’m convinced that I’d have liked this CD even if I didn’t know anybody in the band. (Frankly, I'm just grateful that knowing Rob led me to discover this band's music.) And though I was charmed by their low-fi debut Baskervilles, I see a huge leap forward with this third album. Though they’ve added horns and strings, the sound is never over-produced – it simply offers a greater variety of ways for them to deliver those catchy pop hooks. (The one exception is a track called “Smash,” a reworking of an earlier song called “This Was the Weekend,” which does seem overloaded with horns.)
Ultimately, it’s those tuneful hooks that prevail. And if the lyrics are a little off-kilter, so much the better.
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