Where have I been!?

I’ve been a wayward soul when it comes to new music in recent months, but a rare excursion to Music for Robots proved life-alteringly rewarding when the first single, and consequently the first track from Swimming, the latest full-length from the French Kicks was posted.

There are albums that enter your life at the precise moment necessary to become a perfect soundtrack to your present existence. I really never listened to the French Kicks before; I do know I played one or two songs in the 2 hours of indie filler I patchworked together creating dance sets, but my familiarity with the band ends there.  But Swimming has made me a believer! From the first note -- beguiling and bittersweet guitar melody, the kind that hooks you from across the room -- to the plaintively honest and perfectly reverbed first vocal line -- to a dream-like chorus grounded by driving drums and insistent string melodies -- this is a perfect indie pop song, and precisely the kind a jaded indie-rock defector wants to hear.

Is the album all that good? Well, yeah. The over-all tone is sad, but wistfully so; this is blissgaze, I’d like to call it… dreamy and self-involved, but staring at the sky and searchingly squinting at a cloudy sun rather than studying one’s shoes. It is certainly rock-driven enough to please a bar crowd, but it’s beautiful enough to fall asleep to. I don’t know what it’s about… to be totally honest, I haven’t paid too much attention to the lyrics. They say it best themselves: “Why tell me why; I don’t know…" The band lets the guitars, simple but shimmery rhythms, set the stage for vocal lines that tell a universal story: bittersweet lament of summer fling turned autumn heartbreak.

This is music that makes you genuinely smile when you attempted a casual smirk. It's as if the French Kicks went on the platonic ideal of a summer vacation and then wrote about it as the chill of winter faded the glow of their collective tan.

“What comes after when we say so long for now…. I’ll see you…”   

This record has a story to tell, and that’s why it’s been on repeat for months now.

Buy at iTunes now, in stores on May 20.

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