Jingles are fairly repugnant to the ears. Always have been; always will be. Yet similarly routinely, jangle tends to sound as effervescent now as it did yonks back when The Popguns were still firing off seductive charmers left, right, and bloody centre. Ah, The Popguns. Swoon. Best save some of that affection for
Hills, however: hailing from over the Woodland Hills and far away, the L.A. five-piece combine
the cutesy smacks of atypical seafarers Tennis with the scatty contentment of Bethany Cosentino's cruddy early demos to emit a wistful, if decidedly estival
slo-surf. So if you're currently feeling crippled by a maudlin sense of sentimentality for the summer just done and require aural soothing then the
Hills LP is one worth clambering aboard. For beyond the overly mawkish It's Okay, it's brighter than many an August horizon: the miscellaneous looped reverbs of the seemingly
Real Estate-inspired instrumentals Offshore and Downstream; the raw bluesy wash of Back Again; the uptempo cruise to Let's Swim. Alisa Cacho-Sousa et al. even cut loose on the distortion-smeared gumption of Take You There. Although it's the light rock and creaky roll to I've Been Away that could hush a babe in a manger violently swung by Lucifer himself, such is its lulling sway.
Stream away.
