Based out of Brooklyn, The Victoria Lucas has a fine, digestible pop rock sound. Early songs like “Tucson” and “Back to Junk” remind me a lot of some mid-to-late nineties indie rock. I hear a lot of
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Based out of Brooklyn, The Victoria Lucas has a fine, digestible pop rock sound. Early songs like “Tucson” and “Back to Junk” remind me a lot of some mid-to-late nineties indie rock. I hear a lot of Breeders in “Back to Junk” with the quivering main guitar lick, while “Tucson” just sounds like a collection of low key, jangling guitar types of bands from those days. The guitar riff from “Allegheny/Monogahela”, as well as the combination of Juan Stacey’s and Kathy Horne’s unflashy vocals, give an air of earlier Pavement. Note that these three songs, aside from a bit of strings, are pretty much straightforward pop rock. I like that these tunes don’t try to get too quirky for the sake of being different, which topples most rock efforts with the ‘trying too hard’ label.
The record rolls along very nicely before it runs into its first skippable tune of “Wheels of Commerce”, which qualifies as such mainly because it is overly long and strays away from that easygoing guitar sound by incorporating noisy horns and a prolonged ending. I know that eventually a band feels the need to mix things up a little, but man, it was going so well up to this point. Thankfully the following tune, “Finely Street Hooker Song” , has the upbeat pep of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner”, which probably has something to do with the inclusion of a bouncing organ sound. The ending guitar bit tears it up excellently. “Narcissus”, the last track, eases out the record like Pavement might during one of their ‘fast’ songs during “Wowee Zowee” (which is to say, not fast at all but with enough energy to move it along well). I’m glad the Victoria Lucas decided not to get too mushy in the end, which usually makes for a dull impression after an otherwise exuberant effort.
