It’s initially disappointing that the rest of Summer of Hate, Crocodiles’ first full-length, sounds nothing like “I Wanna Kill.” Unlike the single, the rest of the album favours drones over concise pop songs; Crocodiles come about their hooks by way of repetition, not melody, mixing shoegaze guitars with warm synths and hypnotic electro beats. “Here Comes the Sky” is one of the standouts of the collection, despite not really going anywhere in its four-minute runtime; the plunking piano and tremelo-laden arpeggios sound more like a soothing interlude than a radio-ready single.

When the group does pick up the pace, the hooks are typically buried by the hazy production. “Refuse Angels” is short and punchy, but the vocals are so drenched in reverb that it’s practically an instrumental. But with Crocodiles, that’s part of the experience, since Summer of Hate is more about the sonics than the songwriting. This is best exemplified by the title track, its cavernous guitar fuzz the perfect accompaniment to the creep-out vocal melody. It may not be the tight collection of pop songs that the lead single suggests, but the dreamy atmospherics are just as compelling.

Summer of Hate is out now via Fat Possum.

For most of Stay Gold, Pony Up, favours countrified acoustic strummers and breezy, jangling pop rock. Occasionally, however, they venture into more hard hitting terrain, as on the galloping rocker “Charles.” The driving rhythm is set against tinny synth leads and the usual girlish vocals, making it the catchiest song on the album. (Interestingly, the synth lines sound a heck of a lot like the ending of “Grounds for Divorce” by Wolf Parade, so perhaps there is a touch of Montreal to the band after all.)

Download: “Charles”

Stay Gold doesn’t have a knock out single, but there’s not a dud in the bunch. The band chose to self release the album, which is a little surprising—after all, plenty of labels would doubtless be attracted to the the clever songwriting and effortless charm. If you want to pick it up, you’ll have to head over to the group’s website.

Luckily, hazy pop rock is fashionable right now, so Elephant Stone’s debut album, The Seven Seas, doesn’t come off as outdated—note the similarity between “I Am Blind” and “Contender” by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, a song that came out earlier this year. And the songwriting is sharp, so the group is likely to seem outdated any time soon. “Bombs Bomb Away” is upbeat and hooky despite its morbid subject matter, while the swooning anti-love song “Blood from a Stone” is laden with cinematic strings and gorgeous tremolo guitar.

The group’s forays into psychedelia are, unfortunately, less successful. On several of the songs, frontman Rishi Dhir doubles on sitar, and these tracks seem more like caricatures of ’60s world music than genuine embodiments of it. “The Straight Line” is an aimless seven-minute sitar jam and, placed right in the middle of the album, it sucks some of the energy out of the collection. The sitar works better on “The Seven Seas,” when it is used as an accompanying instrument in a focused pop song.

Still, despite the occasional misstep, The Seven Seas has plenty of well-written pop songs, and is an excellent contribution to the retro jangle rock scene. It’s out now via Elephants on Parade.

The clip depicts a dusk-till-dawn party, taking Girls and a group of friends around their hometown of San Francisco. Nothing much really happens—the action high point is when they steal a candy bar from a corner store. But the video uses some of the oldest tricks in the book—slow motion, lingering close-ups, lens flares—to great nostalgic effect. The video’s depiction of youthful abandon is the perfect accompaniment to the song’s seemingly endless refrain, “I don’t wanna die / Without shaking up a leg or two / Yeah, I wanna do some dancing too / So come, come on, come on, come on and dance with me.”

Beginning with sparse acoustic strumming and subtle atmospherics, the arrangement explodes about halfway through; fuzzy dream pop guitars take over, bringing the song to a blissful climax that’s sustained for over three minutes. Meanwhile, the video shows the band climbing up to a lookout over the city to watch the sunrise.

It’s a nice clip for a great song, so be sure to give it a watch (so long as you have a high tolerance for dude-on-dude kissing).

Album is due out September 22 via True Panther Sounds. The label will also release a 10″ single of “Hellhole Ratrace” on August 18. An mp3 download of the track is available below.

Download: “Hellhole Ratrace”

Things Fall Apart is a fun listen, but at times it does feel a little like a pastiche. In that sense, the Newfoundland trio has more in common with Wolfmother or Jet than with actual ’70s rock. (But let’s give the Novaks their due—they’re infinitely less stupid than Jet.)

The best song on the album is the one that is least indebted to the ’70s: “There Goes the Night” is laced with daydream guitar licks and moody melodies that recall ’90s alt. rock. The lyrics display a biting wit not found elsewhere on the record, including a hilarious jab at “Some little shit with a picture phone.” It shows that there’s more to the Novaks than just a retro retread. And, so long as the Who are charging $100 a ticket for energy-sapped reunion tours, the Novaks are probably the better choice to fulfill your classic rock craving.

But band shot a video for “There Goes the Night,” although I must admit I’m not quite sure what the make of the weird underground art space/corporate/police raid storyline. Regardless, it looks pretty cool, and the song alone makes it worthwhile viewing.

Things Fall Apart is out now via Sonic Records.

Thankfully, the band found its legs with a searing version of the single “Young Adult Friction.” Unlike the sunny jangle of the studio version, the song was a blast of white hot distortion, its guitars soaked in shoegaze fuzz. The group had a second guitarist in tow, meaning that the band’s sound was even more muscular than usual. An amped-up take on “The Tenure Itch” incited a mosh pit near the front of the stage, and one fan attempted to crowd surf but wiped out badly.

The band debuted a new song, “Higher Than the Stars,” the title track of its upcoming EP. With dreamy synth pads and a blissful pop chorus, the song sounded a bit like a long lost anthem from an ’80s teen movie.

Unfortunately, drummer Kurt Feldman broke his snare drum, and since no one had a replacement, the set was cut short. During the final song, “A Teenager in Love,” the snare sounded like Feldman was hitting a torn piece of a loose leaf paper. Nevertheless, the group still managed to play most of its self-titled album, plus a handful of b-sides. The show was unlikely to convert any skeptics, but for fans of the album, it was an excellent showcase of the band’s songwriting chops.

The evening was opened by Girls, a San Francisco four-piece that, like Women, is entirely made up of men. Still, it was easy to see where the group got its name, since both of the guitarists had long, flowing locks of blond hair. Most of the group’s songs sounded like ’50s doo wop played with the dreamy jangle of I.R.S.-era R.E.M. Girls sounded best when they stretched into more ambitious territory, as on the epic singalong “Hellhole Ratrace.” The group’s first full-length is due out in September, and, based on last night’s performance, it could be one of the breakthrough albums of the fall.

Last night, Deerhunter and Black Lips co-headlined a show at the Commodore Ballroom. Deerhunter went on first, playing an array of songs from its back catalogue, drawing most heavily on last year’s Microcastle. Unlike the ambient drones that feature so prominently on their studio albums, Bradford Cox & co. downplayed their experimentalism in favour of stomping, bass-heavy takes on “Cryptograms” and “Never Stops,” whipping the crowd into a frenzy of moshing, crowd surfing and stage diving.

The energy level was upped even further when the band tore through a fuzzy version of “Nothing Ever Happened,” its epic instrumental passages punctuated by Cox’s squealing feedback solos. The set highlight came during “Saved by Old Times,” featuring an unhinged vocal cameo from Black Lips guitarist Cole Alexander.

As rowdy as Deerhunter’s performance was, Black Lips’ set was full-blown mayhem. I wasn’t keeping a tally, but the group must have played well over 20 songs, each of them a concise blast of southern-fried punk mayhem (as well as a foray into doo wop with the single “I’ll Be with You”). No song passed without several attendees climbing up on stage to crowd surf; security kept its distance, and the band didn’t seem to mind sharing the spotlight with its fans. Unfortunately, a few crowd members exploited Black Lips’ generosity, and at one point, four fans milled around of stage for several awkward minutes. Two of them, apparently meeting for the first time, began dirty dancing until another concert-goer climbed on stage and mercifully dragged them off. Later, a burly fan (who looked for all the world like Sully Erna of Godsmack) grabbed Jared Swilley’s microphone and began screaming until it was physically wrested from him by a roadie.

As the set went on, bouncers poured water bottles into the dangerously jam-packed audience. This added to the barrage of bottles and glasses being thrown around the room; just as the band was starting, I got nailed in the head with a half-full water bottle. The music itself wasn’t as memorable as Deerhunter, but it was easily the most chaotic I’ve ever seen the audience get in the Commodore Ballroom.

Local blues rock the TVees opened the show with a fun, if overly anachronistic set of punchy retro throwbacks. Dressed in dapper suits and ties, the group’s blues punk rave-ups evoked ’60s garage rockers like the Sonics and MC5. It was enjoyable enough, but it would be nice to hear a little more personality in the band’s retread of such an oft-imitated style.

Opening track “Hospital” describes ascending to heaven, its plaintive melody sitting atop of a bed of sawing strings and wordless moans. The rest of the album is similarly preoccupied with mortality, from the ghostly waltz “Acceptable Loss” to the bouncy “Bury You Alive,” which makes the grisly promise of its title sound almost cheerful. Nearly every track features dense strings arrangements and rich choral harmonies, transforming the group’s oddball folk songs into baroque hymns that recall Fleet Foxes at their darkest. The eeriness is intensified by singer Jon Sunde’s high, nasal vocals, which sound a bit like he took a hit of helium before the recording sessions.

Occasionally, the band makes an unexpected foray into bubblegum rock, as on “A Conversation About Cancer,” which retells the story of David and Goliath with sunny harmonies and a skipping, countrified beat. “A Near Death Experience at Sea” similarly belies its title with joyous horn flourishes and goofy doo-wop vocals.

The album finishes with “The Stewardess,” an unexpectedly sobered love song with deep vocals that makes Sunde’s voice sound practically normal. Beginning with the lyric “Won’t you come back? / I’m not the same without you, without you / Let’s face the facts / Not nearly as clever, as funny to anybody but you.” It’s so heartbreaking in its simplicity that it diminishes somewhat from the achievement of the rest of the album. After all, if the Daredevil Christopher Wright is this good at writing uncomplicated folk pop, why bother with the quirky bells and whistles (literally) of the rest of the album? Nevertheless, In Deference to a Broken Back is as beautiful as it is creepy, making it one of the year’s stand-out debut albums.

The album is exactly what the title suggests—a Weezer tribute album with all of the songs reinvented as 8-bit electro jams that would have fit nicely in any Nintendo game circa 1986. It’s a hilarious concept, and actually makes a surprisingly entertaining listen. It draws on a variety of lo-fi artists, and its 14 tracks cover a range of well-known singles and obscure b-sides.

The best tracks are those that are most faithful to the source material. “Buddy Holly” (performed here by nordloef) follows the melody of the original tune exactly, but transforms it into a Street Fighter-style rave-up. Tugboat‘s take on “El Scorcho” is gently plodding, and its chirpy melody could have been drawn from Super Mario Bros., an effect that’s intensified by sounds that resemble mushroom power-ups.

Download: “El Scorcho”

The tracks with vocals don’t fit so well as the instrumentals, as they somewhat diminish the video game atmosphere. Bit Shifter‘s version of “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” is especially awkward, as it includes an interpolation of the Pixies‘ “Wave of Mutilation”—an interesting medley to be sure, but it’s out of place here.

But I’m probably over-thinking it. After all, the whole album is fun to listen to, and it accomplishes what any good tribute album should—it makes you realize just how great the source material truly is.

Head over to Pterodactyl Squad’s website to download the whole thing for free.