Uni Boys

This one has been bubbling under for a long time, cropping up with some great singles along the way. Now, the latest album from Uni Boys has landed in all its power pop glory. Their Curation Records debut was recorded at home and tweaked and toned in Garageband, but it sounds as studio fresh as any set that’s come down the chute in the past 40 years. While the band seems uneasy pinning down an exact set of influences, it’s clear that they’ve processed their power pop petrol into a spark that ignites the kind of fires that fed The Quick, Milk n’ Cookies, Colors, Advertising, and Shoes. They capture the curl of the lip that comes with a wry smile, parlay their heartbreak into hooks that hurt as much as they heal — a tonic for heartbreak and havoc.

Uni Boys have found the perfect mix of pining and preening and turned it into an album that feels wrenched out of time. Slip any of these onto a 7”, beat the sleeve, and shuffle it into an unsorted crate and I’d be willing to bet that more than a few of these could fool deep dive power pop aficionados. The key is their immersive nature. There’s not a whiff of homage here, its more like the band is a conduit for ’79-’82 smog n salt summers on the West Coast. There’s a school break, teen movie careen to the album. They evoke the kind of goofball, hapless romantic sentiment that got handed down on high from the Ramones in Rock n’ Roll High School and was repeated infinitely through the ‘80s on screen from The Plimsouls to Adam Roth’s recently unearthed b-movie bliss. Do It All Next Week slides through its breathless run without a slack moment in the bunch, just an undeniable string of pop confections that are too catchy for their own good.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.