I was taken by surprise by The Laughing Chime's Zoo Avenue EP. I don't always go for jangly, retro indie rock, but I dig what these guys are doing. The band's members are very young too, and that's what has stunned me more than anything. I'm not used to listening to music made by literal teens. Usually, bands I encounter who sing about youthful exhibition and the angst of adolescence are in their late '20s, at least. Also, rock bands nowadays are pretty long in the tooth before they are able to pin down a decent record deal with a medium-sized indie label (Slumberland in this case). Kids starting a band in their garage and getting signed before they can legally buy their own beer is more of a '60s thing. The story of The Laughing Chime is almost not even of this century, and reads more like the beginning of a VH1 special where the interview subjects are recounting the band's first big break- getting signed to Sire, or some other seeming stroke of luck; brothers, Evan and Quinn Seurkamp, picked up guitars in a sleepy Midwest town and formed a band with some friends just to prove that they could, they then gain notoriety from playing local gigs, and a Battle of the Bands or two, and then before you knew it, Boom! they've inked a deal and are overnight sensations. That's all she wrote (or I wrote?)! Except for the overnight sensation part. They might still have a ways to go before they fully get their due. A record deal is not worth what they used to be (and I'm sure whatever artistic ambitions it has amplified, they're all still going to need to finish college and weigh their options at other careers), but it's still somewhat heartening to see young guys get to live out this kind of rock 'n roll dream in the midst of our current and profoundly cynical era. It's fitting, too, that The Laughing Chimes are playing in a style perfected in the '80s, that was heavily inspired by the music of the '60s. REM was thoroughly indebted to the Byrds and Velvet Underground, and the Laughing Chimes, are in turn, inspired by REM, The Smiths, and others to make music that continues this grand fashion and legacy of unapologetically delicate, blushingly passionate, and lyrically poetic guitar pop. Zoo Avenue is timeless in that regard, in that it is able to reach back through the decades, grasping the fundamental essence of each period through which it passes, without distorting these vital patterns, or losing its own sense of identity in the process. You can hear the softness and the tenderness of those '60s boy bands whistling through these tracks like a whisper on the wind, getting caught on the contemplatively angular guitar work and subsequently diverted into inward leaning and intimate reflections on the unassuming and quotidian aspects of small town living. While its charming to hear these almost anachronistic portrayals of American life in the heartland depicted through retro-engineered sounds, the album also benefits from a knowing implementation of modern musical modalities; punching these numbers up with peppy rock tempos, bristlingly textured chord progressions that ride the line between pure skill and telegraphed sincerity, and powerpop harmonies that have clearly had time to stew on the impact of grunge before consciously eschewing its edicts. Zoo Avenue is a bountiful menagerie of the familiar and time-honored, faithfully repurposed with a high level of esteem for their source in order to give context to the lives of young men making their way through the world today.
