Thirty years is a long time to be playing plangent power-pop, but Washington band The Posies have been applying the plectrums with persistence.
Mainstays Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow have kept the name afloat, and while there's a strong sense of the album – the band's first since 2010's Blood/Candy – preaching to the converted, it'd be a cold-hearted guitar-pop fan who'd deny just how strong a collection of songs it is.
All that constitutes highly efficient power-pop is present and correct: Beatles-esque melodies (Scattered, Rollercoaster Zen), blissfully psyched-out harmonies (Unlikely Places, The Sound of Clouds), crunchy pop/rock (Squirrel vs Snake, The Plague), acoustic prettiness (March Climes), and an overall sense of musicians that know their chosen music inside out.
