I shouldn’t write this review.
As a matter of course, I don’t review albums from bands I know much about — I like the tabula rasa of being pleasantly surprised or disappointed by a band I’m hearing for the first time. And while I was aware of Army Navy (it did have that song on Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) when I clicked go to begin The Last Place, the new release from the Los Angeles trio, I wasn’t prepared for the 45 minutes of unrelenting bliss which followed. We all have a soundtrack to our lives, and I cannot stop listening to The Last Place because it is mine.
You see my dilemma.
I love power pop, maybe too much (I have multiple Romantics albums), and what Justin Kennedy and his Army Navy mates created is a power pop classic which harkens Elvis Costello, The Housemartins and a brilliant but forgotten band called For Squirrels. The jangles, the hooks, the lyrics of an ardent affair with a Hollywood starlet (is it real? Who cares) — it’s all too much for my indie pop heart to take.
The band me has me at go — the opening guitar riff of “Last Legs” is simple yet glimmering — racing through a varied tune which includes a Teenage Fanclub fuzzed-out guitar solo followed by an acoustic break The Smiths would be proud of. “Ode to Janice Melt,” a skip-jump of a song, is meant to perpetuate Kennedy’s supposed affair with married actress “maybe it’s your celebrity/ that makes you want to slum it with me,” he sings with whimsy. But what may have been a bad breakup sure sounds good on tape.
There’s not a song to dislike. “Circus” is romping with homages to the best of Nick Lowe; “Feathered” is a three-minute gem roaming in Rivers Cuomo territory; and I dare anyone to not foot tap along to “I Think It’s Gonna Happen.” You have no choice.
I thought the album-ending “Pastoral” was going to trip the band up — power pop does not translate in six-minute songs — but this too builds into a triumph. It starts as a ballad and ends into a chanting free-for-all.
So that’s it. I know reviews are meant to be conjured with a critical eye and this reads more like a fan letter to a Teen Beat fanzine. I don’t care, we love what we love — and this I love.
