Review: Pet Lions – Soft Right EP

December 9th, 2009 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

Soft Right, the debut EP by Chicago’s own Pet Lions, showcases a band that’s got confidence and style to burn. I go through a lot of EPs and demos and crazy shit like that trying to find new stuff we can share with our readers here at AssaultBLOG, and this Pet Lions CD knocked me on my ass. It’s by far the tastiest nugget I’ve yet had the pleasure of chewing up and then regurgitating for you, dear reader.

Soft Right is kind of like Vampire Weekend re-imagined for the Midwest, with a stronger Weezer influence and a gloomier outlook. Also: no African guitar sounds, but that’s okay. These are smart and breezy songs about Italian vacations and dancing vs. not-dancing. The music is sharp and melodic without being cloying, and the songs are sad but they never veer into melodrama. Pet Lions are cocky, but not jerky; Soft Right opens a small window into their world, and they make very good company.

Singer Karl Østby has a pretty good formula worked out: On opener “Roman History” he drops a rapid-fire narrative over some punchy riffs, and the effect is like Rivers Cuomo fronting the Strokes, with some bright, chimey flourishes accentuating the tune’s underlying melancholy. “Maybe,” he sings, “you need to stop thinkin’ ’bout how much you miss the other girl,” advice that he can’t bring himself to take throughout the rest of the songs here. “Propeller Plane” finds Østby hiding out behind the Circus Maximus, and his location in “Stuck At The Bottom” is pretty plainly telegraphed in the song’s title; this is a dude who doesn’t “mind waiting for you to be alone again” and promises to “kiss you discretely in the plaza where we met.” I know I might not be Mr. Østby’s dream date, but consider me seduced just the same.

Every band needs a secret weapon, and Pet Lions’ is easy to identify: Shuhei Yamamoto rounds all these songs out with perfect bass lines, the kind that feel lifted from old Cure songs but sound clearly original. The guitar work throughout (by Østby and Tom Owens) is pleasant but decidedly slight; there’s plenty of room for the bass to breathe, and the band achieves its most striking, immediately satisfying moment on “I Will Track You Down” when Østby sneers “Everybody stop / She’s ain’t comin’ home with you / She’s coming home with me” over just Matt Dahl’s kicky, Spoon-y drums. Pet Lions are junior masters of dynamics – they know it’s the small touches that really matter, and they seem to have an organic, intuitive grip on what actually works. There’s not a touch here that feels out of place.

The main thing, as usual, is fun, and Soft Right is super fun. The band will give it to you for free if you sign up for their email list, so there’s no reason not to be all over this. All smart-sounding bullshit aside, I burned these tracks onto a CD and I take that CD everywhere now; this is the kind of music that re-awakens old feelings and makes me nostalgic for stuff that never happened. It is deep romantic longing set to boilerplate indie with small, smart touches that make it pretty much essential. You’ll want to play it for all your friends, and if they don’t get into it, you’ll like them a little bit less. It’s pretty good.