Creative Writing 
After opening up the year with an indispensable EP, Northeast indie outfit Creative Writing continues collecting accolades on a debut full length that expands the EP’s knack for rifling through the remnants of college radio’s glory days. The EP found them scuffing the ‘90s with some dirt of their own, tacking through Pavement’s slack tangle with twang, skirting the underbelly of the IRS years, and dropping hints at Homestead’s lesser headliners. The latter influence keeps its hold on the new LP, offering shades of Windbreaker’s jangled charms and Big Dipper’s gnarled pop pedigree. They keep a kinship with the bands that dot comps like Strum & Thrum or Left of the Dial, the kind that may never be household names, but remain dear to armchair scene documentarians and LP librarians. Creative Writing culls from more than a few familiar names around New England’s current crop, with members hailing from RSTB faves Huevos II, Luxor Rentals, Sore Eros, Jeanines and Estrogen Highs. The deep bench of pop experience gives Baby Did This an almost effortless air.
The band has a way of balancing the soft ruffle of power pop with a hidden knife edge. They swing towards the broken skin and bruised hearts of indie outliers, feeling more kinship with the pop overwhelm of Game Theory and the taut discomfort of Toy Love than with the more often cited signifiers of punk and power pop. There’s a gauziness hung over the record, a feeling of peering in at the band through the dirty windows of the past. The production adds the kind of haze that used to be ubiquitous in photos, but ebbed as indoor smoking disappeared. Every song on Baby Did This evokes the back corner stage in a college town; a working band banging out hooks that rise above the clink of beers. The band pins jangles to a thick miasma of melancholy, just perfect for the chill that’s about to enter the air. Some records are just built for Autumn and there have been fewer perfect sweater weather slabs out this year. This one’s destined to charm the record collectors, but it’s a near perfect dose of pop for all the indie upstarts out there.
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