On their second album,
Songs from Another Life,
the Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness found a sweet spot that married the sounds of jangle pioneers like
the Byrds with 1990s successors such as
Teenage Fanclub and
Velvet Crush, although always with an emphasis on the tenderer side of these influences. A year later,
The Third Wave Of… returns them to both producer Yon Vidaur and that formula on another set of ten bittersweet charmers that clock in at under 30 minutes.
The Boys -- the long-distance duo of Scotland's Andrew Taylor (
Dropkick) and Spain's Gonzalo Marco (
El Palacio de Linares) -- are joined this time by singer/songwriter
Mary Lou Lord on one song, "Isolation," a pandemic-era album highlight that longs to return to quarantine with that special someone. Taylor and
Lord's dreamy, soft-toned harmonies are the perfect complement to the song's midtempo bounce and a jangle enhanced by pedal steel guitar. That song is somewhat contrasted by the dampened eighth-note pulse, distortion, and brisk tempo of old-school power pop entry "In the Right," which is joined under the power pop umbrella by tracks like the urgent "Out of Time" and more reflective "Look Back." Taylor gets more self-conscious on "Turning Red" without sacrificing lush and lively harmonic progressions, and the album closes on the self-examining "Old Ways," a song whose electronic components never overwhelm its warm, gently syncopated acoustics.
The Third Wave is sure to please fans of its predecessor and may even outdo it in terms of tight bridges and relative buoyancy. Release note: All formats but the vinyl include an acoustic version of "Isolation" as a bonus track. ~ Marcy Donelson