If indie guitar pop is your thing, then this is your thing. The New Jersey band's sophomore album, Days, faintly traces the same hazy summer dreams of fellow east-coasters Beach House. Where the Baltimore duo's instant classic Teen Dream was awash in organ-drones and Victoria Grand's lived-in vocals, Days is carried by lustrous guitar intricacies and the band's easy-going, reverbed harmonies. Like Teen Dream, however, Days' deceptively unadorned melodies are difficult to ignore. The album packs a punch even when it sounds so sleight and weightless.
Days is played with such casual exactness, the album brings to mind the precision of The Sea and Cake, only breezier, warmer, and embossed with reverb and delay. Though the band is likely capable of producing intricate post-rock, the loose feel of this album is vintage melodic pop, recalling the lush and artful melodies of the Byrds, early-R.E.M., and The Shins. During certain moments, the band's vocal shimmer even suggests the Beach Boys, as the songs are transported by suburban-garage guitars that hint at the surf just a short drive away.
Like many indie records of the past several years, Days allows you to create a contextual narrative in your head, rooted in a very specific place or time. For The D Man, that place and time is a youthful summer not too far distant and the carefree romance that slowly evaporates under the long afternoon of my memory. The result is, without a doubt, hypnotic.
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