Bloods

Aussie garage-pop upstarts Bloods have been raining down hits around RSTB for the past few years, though they’ve been flying under the radar of far too many stateside. Their last album proved hard to grip in The States, but thanks to some help from the Sub Pop affiliated Share It, the band’s latest is hitting Western Shores. Built off of some of their most effervescent singles – the roller rink crash of “Feelings,” the wide-skied ripper “Bug Eyes” – the band’s new album bounds into the room and makes a mess with the full force of a punk packed confetti canon. The band enlisted Liam Jacobson, who recently gave a jolt to fellow Aussies Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, and his hand pushes their pop impulses to the front. The skinned-knees n’ grit that pocked their early EPs fades into the background without losing any of the elements that made the band fun in the first place.

Much like US counterparts Bleached, the band wraps up their fuzz-whipped hooks in swooning harmonies. They summon up songs that are meant to be yelled in unison out of dropped windows like future road trip classics to heal the heart and howl at the sun. There’s more than a touch of mid-‘90s fuzz toasters in the DNA of Feelings, from the “Better Than Me” bounce of The Muffs to the sweetly sung simmer of That Dog. They don’t linger too long in the Gen-X garden, though, they form fit their fuzz to a cleaner-lined indie that recalls The Ravonettes and later-period Dum Dum Girls. Associations aside, its great to hear the band come into their own and balance grit and gloss with grace.

Bonus points on the album and label come from Share It’s operating principle of giving half of their records’ proceeds to a charity of the band’s choosing. In this case half the bucks go to an Australian-based Indigenous Literacy Foundation. So you can feel good while this one takes a few turns around the table.