Following the grand tradition of straightforward garage rock / pop outfits, The Courtneys’ latest record is full of jangly, not-quite-pop hooks and lollipop-sweet harmonies. Their sophomore release is effectively a reduction in the culinary sense of the same playful energy that filled their debut.
If there’s one qualifier that can be broadly applied to The Courtneys II, it’s fuzziness. The (not overly) lo-fi production takes up just a little more space than it needs to, and ends up covering the content of the record like a thin blanket, providing texture some of the time, vaguely annoying the rest.
The record’s opening track is spot-on to soundtrack a summer road trip in that it’s got the same tempo and lyrics of the “he likes me, he likes me not” variety that seem to appeal to most major Hollywood studios when looking for music to score just that kind of scene. In this sense, most of the record, outlined by its slightly off-kilter pop structure, is fresh because it sufficiently moves past the regurgitation of genre tropes (within garage rock, a genre that is essentially one big trope) and yet entirely comfortable because it is familiar. The Courtneys II takes a couple of steps forward but doesn’t cover so much distance that it asks listeners to deal with anything (narratives, instrumentality, aesthetics) that they have not already experienced.
That said, what the record does do, it does well. “Country Song” and “Lost Boys” for example, set a steady, head-bopping rhythm via fuzzed guitars and steady kit-work that drive the tracks forward. The vocals swing by with vaguely bittersweet melodies that, barring lyricism, are more of a key component to the tracks than the guitars are. Of the two, “Country Song” boasts one of the most infectious chorus structures on the record, despite the spaces between verses that drag on just a little too long.
“Iron Deficiency” is probably the least pop-leaning track on the record in that the vocals take on a more deadpan tone, but for all their lacklustre affectations, the track’s simple groove turns an otherwise underwhelming lo-fi track into the catchiest of the more compositionally-sleepy tracks on this record.
However, the formula that The Courtneys seem to stick to throughout the record is straightforward and unburdened by attempts to reach lofty production goals. “Frankie” for example is again set to a backdrop of fuzzy guitar rhythms. Almost surf-rock in its use of a downstroke-heavy bassline, the track’s vocals, augmented by reverb, provide the catchiest set of verses on the record while managing to retain originality through its four-minute run-time.
Perhaps sonically amorphous at first listen, The Courtneys’ latest record manages to skirt the pitfalls of hook-fetishizing pop while at the same time maintaining a strict philosophy of strict simplicity in its approach to composition; function trumps form and, for the most part, we’re better off for it.
If they don’t break away from the shroud of fuzzy distortion they seem so eager to wrap themselves in, The Courtneys might devolve into the kind of band that releases the same record over and over. But if they focus on the structural grounding and pop-tinged hooks employed masterfully throughout this record while moving, with purpose, in a specific direction, then The Courtneys might turn out to be the band that fills the void left by acts like the Arctic Monkeys and The Vaccines when they turned, to their detriment, towards calmer, less-abrasive tones.
