Everyone’s a little off-kilter lately. Pop music has gone nuts in the wake of Hurricane Lady Gaga, bros have given up their Dave Matthews Band in favor of the much less user-friendly genre of dubstep, Battles lost a singer and still sound good, Bon Iver made the most strangely beautiful album of the year thus far, and on their latest release, Death Cab for Cutie became really happy. Go figure the Bynars, a Boston-based quartet, recorded what plays as a very archetypal album, one leaving no typical pop structure untouched, no classically cheesy lyric unsung, no retro ‘80s allusion (Devo, the Cars, etc.) unchecked.
So why does it sound so put-on? The biggest trend in 2011 is all about changing one’s sound, trying new things, shaking up lineups and going in directions previously thought to be ridiculous, to the point hearing Bynars lyrics like “Get your feet off the ground/Keep your head in the clouds” and synth-pop holdovers from three decades ago seems just as ridiculous as it is retro. Everything on The Bynars is tuneful, judiciously produced, and energetic, but something about that energy doesn’t sit right, at least right now when others are putting their energy toward pushing the envelope faster than FedEx Priority Shipping can.
The Bynars, who have surely spent long hours poring over their pop encyclopedias, often use one conceit which has been around since the days of “I Saw Her Standing There” and used by everyone from Little Richard to Blink 182: pretend you’re still in high school and sing about that girl you have a crush on. The plot of “Steal My Sunshine”, a hyper dance-pop number with a psychedelic chorus, sounds like it comes from a lost John Hughes movie. “We studied at my house on a Tuesday night/You’re telling all your friends 'Yeah, I guess he’s all right'/I’m telling all my friends that we partied all night,” sings Matt Jakola. Later, on “This Is Our Song”, the song’s subjects are both “sweet sixteen” and are enthusiastic enough whenever their song comes on, they like to shout “Hey! Hey! Hey! Yeah!” (thankfully their song doesn’t sound like the squiggly, redundant hip-hop breakdown before the last chorus).
Jakola’s voice is the most accurate replica of Elvis Costello’s we’ve heard in a long time. His voice is key to the Bynars’ sound; anything weaker or less lively and the tracks would sink to the bottom of the sonic ocean. On the bouncy, tidy “Angeline,” and on the closer, “Love Explosion,” (with chords appropriated straight from Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”), Jakola gets snarky, desperate and lovelorn, then wails and yowls with appealing vigor. If anything, The Bynars will leave you with a great impression of their lead singer, who has enough spirit to make the oft-syrupy lyrics sound believable.
Other influences appear on the album: lots of Beatles, especially with their harmonies and the slower bits (like the dreamy “Every Little Thing You Love”), and certainly the Strokes, whose tight 2/4 rock ‘n’ roll rhythms show up on songs like “Love Me,” which is equally cloying and charming, with the singer offering to buy his love a bunny and asking, “am I freaking you out?” And the most faithful theft of Elvis Costello occurs on “Moonlight;” the harmonious desperation sounds like a sped-up “Radio Radio.”
So what about this album rings false? Is it the relentless major key compositions, the just-this-side-of-tinny synths, the lyrics about high school love gone wrong? Do records sounding this positive and effervescent automatically bring out the cynical snob in a critic? Any of these tracks would make a great single, and yet the album as a whole is so caffeinated and sweet it might be the musical version of Four Loko: it seems like a good idea at first, until you get to the end of the can. Perhaps the Bynars should follow the example of Four Loko. Keep what works (the pop structures, retro influences and Elvis Costello vocals) and ditch the caffeine.
Track list:
1. How Does it Feel to Be in Love?
2. Asking Your Mom for Money
3. Steal My Sunshine
4. Can You Hear It?
5. Ba Ba Ba
6. Every Little Thing You Love
7. Angeline
8. This Is Our Song
9. Love Me
10. Moonlight
11. Haunted House
12. Love Explosion
