SOCIAL STUDIES – Wind-Up Wooden Heart

I really want to love this album.  It’s got all the standard elements of a fun indie record: the moody harmonies, the gritty guitar riffs, the pulsing bass, and, of course, the synth.  Social Studies even hail from San Francisco, where indie bands spring up like big white turbines on a NorCal wind farm.  But maybe it’s this oversaturation of the not-quite-mainstream-but-far-from-eccentric sound that makes a record like Wind-Up Wooden Heart struggle to take hold and force you to really listen.

So I listened.  Several times.  And while the band certainly has a knack for creating energetic, catchy hooks, I haven’t been drawn in enough to really fall headphones-over-heels.  Singer Natalia Rogovin sings relatively cliché-free lyrics, but oftentimes they’re somewhere between obscure and uninteresting and thus fail to inspire much in the way of spaced-out daydreams or full-blast sing-alongs.  There’s a good band here, and maybe something as simple as a little more production value would boost them into the realm of Deerhoof, Beach House, or any other of their influencers.

(Antenna Farm Records , PO Box 29855, Oakland, CA 94604)