Connecticut:

High Pop

CITY: Waterbury
SONG TO DOWNLOAD: "Drip From the Sea"
WEBSITE: http://highpopforever.bandcamp.com/

 

Last fall, High Pop released Hippie Speed Ball, a cassette loaded with grungy basement-quality pop songs — pretty much exactly what you’d expect from two bored New England teens getting stoned and dreaming of SoCal. The slacker aesthetic is familiar — crunchy guitars, erratic drums, bratty vocals, trippy sound effects — kind of like a pre–King of the Beach Wavves demo. But the result feels fresh. Standout track “Drip from the Sea” builds slowly around a simple, sunny melody — until about two minutes in, when the whole thing erupts. “You were all that I had” repeats over and over, the duo’s reverb-washed voices crackling with boyish angst. It’s the type of sincere, distorted pop music that’ll leave you nostalgic for the golden age of MP3 blogging, back before being pegged as lo-fi felt like a death sentence.

_Patrick McDermott

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Record Label You Should Know: Safety Meeting Records

Featuring genres that range from synth-pop to freak-folk to garage-rock, New Haven’s Safety Meeting has been putting out some of the Constitution State’s best indie since ’05. Check out their latest, the Steve Albini–produced LP from New London’s Ferocious Fucking Teeth.

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