A wishy-washy message can’t mar the good music

The New Romance

Pretty Girls Make Graves

Matador Records

… The New Romance

Pretty Girls Make Graves

Matador Records

It’s no coincidence that the opening track on The New Romance is titled “Something Bigger, Something Brighter.” For Pretty Girls Make Graves, a Seattle-based quintet with a penchant for explosive guitar riffs, this title is a double-edged sword. While Andrea “Don’t Say Corin Tucker” Zollo pleads for the electrification of an existential rut, guitars pluck in the background and eventually clash together like punked-out sumo wrestlers, showing us that there’s something “bigger” and “brighter” about the band itself this time around.

Last year, the band dropped Good Health on Touch ‘ Go Records, which established it as one of the more talented, diverse, and musically ambitious groups of its kind. The New Romance does nothing short of maintaining that.

Whether guitars are crunching, distorted organs are intervening, hand claps are impatiently replacing the drums, or Zollo’s vocals are adding more vigor to an already bursting musical assault, Romance simply refuses to stop.

But with lyrics like “You’ll feel better when you cannot feel,” and “Doctor, do you have a Remedy?” and with Zollo seemingly begging her way through the album, it’s hard to gauge exactly what she’s begging for. Youth culture enlightenment? A new boyfriend? Ritalin? A new president in office? Whatever it is, it’s clear that it’s desperately wanted.

Though the message may seem wishy-washy at times, Romance remains a showcase for an incredibly talented band with the musical and social ambition to stick around for a while.