ANR - Stay Kids

The title track and opener will be swimming around your head for days. ‘Stay Kids” slow build and huge release come on like The Beach Boys (Carl Wilson-led era, of course) fronting Mercury Rev (and that’s the Deserter’s Songs phase). This sheer blast of euphoria wants you to hold onto your youth, and there’s rarely been a more convincing, rousing call. That the rest of the album doesn’t come close to touching its stupendous overture is a pity, but no cause for embarrassment. What we’re left with is a charming collection of songs, hanging loosely around an environmental theme, never quite taking off in the way some teasing crescendos suggest it might.

ANR have been on the Miami scene, such as it is, for the best part of a decade now. Initially, the two members, Michael John Hancock and Brian Robertson, pooled their solo work, but ‘Stay Kids’ stands as a UK debut and concise introduction. Their full name – and there’s no easy way to break this – is Awesome New Republic, conjuring up a damn fine way of life or, probably closer to the truth, a pair of blissed-out beach kids. Whatever the conclusion, their easy anthems attempt to fit the bill.

When ANR hit their stride their anthems revolve around soaring synth chords, big choruses and cranium-flattening drums, sending a tingle up the spine to meet the ringing in the ears. But while ‘The Endless Field Of Mercury’ reaches for epic status as it flicks through movements, it can’t hit consistent highs; it’s a fault, too, of ‘This Is The Timing’, a Hot Chippy twitch through strobing synths to spacey ambience that lacks a big idea. On the other hand, there’s a high concept in ‘Holes’, where a light gallop frilled with reverberating Spanish guitar hides a tough-talking political protest. “We’ll find someone new who lies just like you,” goes the spiky chorus as glockenspiel frolics beside. The mesh of elements is a livener after the soggy funk of ‘My Father Worked With Planes’.

Fighting the tide of cute but inconsequential synth pop, two other tracks stand out. ‘Don’t Fear The Get Out’ is a welcome rush of psychedelia that would slot nicely into MGMT’s madcap ‘Congratulations’, and ‘A Year Of Solitude Pays Off’ sees ANR upping their own ante, starting with trancey electronic washes, before taking in some Vampire Weekend afrobeat and topping it all off with a calypso chorus. It’s utterly unfocused and all the brighter for it. More of this full-throttle inspiration and ‘Stay Kids’ would be quite a record; as it is, it’s a patchwork of thrills and fills.