SUCKERS – WILD SMILE

Suckers popped right out of Brooklyn and lay their intensely melodic folk-rock weirdness out on the table with their very smartly produced self-titled EP last year. It seems like only weeks later, and they have furnished us with a full-length album. The communal, raucous party atmosphere is still very much present in this release, yet they have concentrated their efforts to distill the many facets of their songwriting into a musical arc. It can be argued that a lot of what Suckers do is awfully familiar, but what they do they do with passion and pom. The curiously anthemic ramble of Save Your Love For Me has the drug-addled melancholy of 70’s Brian Wilson, Spector-style production getting the wheel turning for the more disco-beat mania of Black Sheep and the Paul Simon-via-Pogues canon You Can Keep Me Running Round. Where Suckers shine the brightest is in the overlapping of their buoyant harmonies, plodding percussive snaps and heart-stopping European melodies such as the chorus of Martha. This is infectious stuff and though not entirely new, they play the Brooklyn ball game in a way that’s accessible, energetic, and electric.

***1/2