LANTERNS
“Apocalypse Youth”
Drag City Records

From the first drum and bass hits of the first track ‘Midnight Psalms’, one thing is made clear: you will be forced to have fun listening to this record whether you like it or not, whether it sulky head-bobbing or full blown grade-school-arm-flail dancing. Of course, by the very nature of your reading a Buddyhead review, your teenage angst and jadedness will either be reaching its zenith, or you’ve long since capitulated to the monotonous grind that has relegated you to the land of tragically hip copywriters, eking out an existence on Chinese food and Coke that’s 70% detergent anyway. So you can just head-bob.

But these kids have obviously never even heard of the internet because there’s vitality seeping out of their every pore by the sound of this record!  That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any good. Actually only the first song is really worth listening to. The rest kinda sounds like Pavement and Pavement are overrated. But there’s enough bright, shiny “ooooh ooh oooohs” and “duh duh do do dos” to make it pretty painless. Think like if Jubilee had a little less soul and were ever going to actually release another record. That’s a ballpark estimate. At this point I’ve listened to the record a good three times and I’m just typing for the sake of it so I’ma finish up. Good, not great. But joyful, if that’s worth anything.

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