Band’s confections are habit-forming
For two long years, Lavender Diamond teased and taunted the indie-pop faithful with one particular song. ‘‘You Broke My Heart’’ was a deceptively simple pop ditty that staggered its complexities in layers. Sounding at once jubilant and angry, the song swelled with strident tambourine and plodding piano, punctuated by singer Becky Stark defiantly repeating the song title until she teetered on hysterics.
‘‘You Broke
My Heart’’ was the breakthrough track on Lavender Diamond’s 2005 EP, ‘‘The Cavalry of Light,’’ recently rereleased on Matador, and it made instant fans out of fawning music bloggers and Pitchfork readers. Could something this fresh really retain its flavor?
‘‘Imagine Our Love,’’ the Los Angeles quartet’s new full-length debut, also on Matador, makes good on that initial promise. It even one-ups it and establishes the band as winsome pop purveyors with a fine sense of melody and songcraft — a pinch of Jenny Lewis, a dash of Tilly and the Wall.
The heartbeat of these delicate gems is Stark’s featherweight soprano, pristine and emotive, gently steering the songs more than driving them. You don’t charge into these songs; you craft them. ‘‘The Garden Rose’’ has a hymn-like aesthetic, and Stark laments, ‘‘So I started to remember/.How to live in present time/.But I wanted to remember/.How it was when you were mine.’’
Hitting the album’s power-pop apex, ‘‘Open Your Heart’’ is an exuberant showcase of hand claps, piano, guitar, drums, and a string section. The only thing missing is a ukulele solo.
Occasionally, though, the album is too content to coast on its own charms, a casualty of Stark’s half-baked songwriting swathed in shimmering arrangements.
‘‘I’ll Never Lie Again’’ sounds fantastic in a gauze of minor keys. Just don’t listen too closely to the lyrics: ‘‘I’ll never lie again/.I’ll never lie again/.Oh, God/.I’ll never/.Lie again.’’
And the jangly, lush ‘‘My Shadow Is a Monday’’ is more singalong than fully formed song. When it’s not all peace signs and Lisa Frank unicorns, the band sounds less credible: An attempt at edgier fare, the mystical ‘‘Like an Arrow,’’ misses its target completely.
Still, it’s all rather fizzy and infectious, which you should expect from an album whose liner notes exalt a flower-power credo of ‘‘We see our world glowing, radiant with joy, radiant with peace, fearless, fed, dancing, laughing.’’
Like an intoxicating summer romance, Lavender Diamond is a heady sugar rush, kind of like a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit. Just chew slowly.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.More:Globe Living/Arts stories