Summer Girlfriends Send Shockwaves Of Good Vibes

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 7, 2012 5:20PM

How rare is it that a band sounds exacty like you think they would based purely on their name? In the case of Summer Girlfriends this Chicago quintet certainly serves up a shimmery chiming sunshine fuzz around the eleven songs that make up their debut album Shockwaves. Under "band interests" they list pizza, puppies and popsicles and while, yes, that sounds threateningly cloying it's not. While the group has cute preoccupations there's nothing cutesy about their tunes.

There's a healthy dose of Brill Building in the group's songwriting and they indulge in a whopping dose of TeenBeat fury. Don't believe us? Check out the first video from the album for the title track.

Man, was that good or what? The band is like a buzz beach-bomb, dropping riffs and making waves. In a town that only experiences six weeks of summer sandwiched between two glaciers of winter this is the sort of stuff that can melt those ice towers into deep lagoons of sun dappled water. There's nothing complicated in Summer Girlfriends' approach, their songs march steadily forward and doesn't try to make things to fussy with much labyrinthine twists and turns. But there's an ephemeral feeling behind their approach that allows each song to fill itself with a plaintive teenage longing that can only bring smiles to the lips of those wiser. We dig it.

MP3: Summer Girlfriends "Pop Rocks"

Summer Girlfriends play their record release party on June 22 at The Burlington.