"To find a band of this genre as good as this you'd have to stretch
all the way back to the Reverbs, and that's saying something"
Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times
"Becker and Dean are accomplished wordsmiths, and with the assistance of a solid rhythm section...the lyrics are set off by strong, if not particularly groundbreaking, arrangements."
Cosmic Debris Magazine
"super-jangly and purposefully cute"
allmusic.com
A power pop and Americana cooperative from the late 90s runs with the torch the Plimsouls, Tommy Keene, Big Star and XTC carried before them. Public Displays of Affection, the band's debut, features brilliantly constructed vignettes spanning three decades of pop confluence. Larry O. Dean's songwriting brings to mind Neil Young at his most straightforward and Roger McGuinn at his most rough-hewn, while Stephen Becker mixes the twee influences of Belle and Sebastian with the crunchy distorted bravado of classic Cheap Trick. Together they weave a harlequin tapestry that compliments each other simply and beautifully.
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A power pop and Americana cooperative from the late 90s runs with the torch the Plimsouls, Tommy Keene, Big Star and XTC carried before them. Fables in Slang, the Chris Stamey-produced sophomore effort, finds the
band more streamlined and polished sonically, with a greater sense of
dynamic interplay to boot. When the band is self-referential, the
hooks are too charming to resist, and when they are their most
ambitious, they are impressive beyond anything they have done
previously. An excellent swan song of a band that packed up before we |
